Austin Reaves and the Los Angeles Lakers got off to a strong start to the season, although they took a big step back on Wednesday night when they were blown out by the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
Reaves had his worst game, finishing with 13 points, five rebounds and three assists on 4-of-12 shooting in 30 minutes as the Thunder’s defense made it tough for both him and Luka Doncic.
After the wire-to-wire loss, Reaves discussed where he felt things started to go wrong, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Bad… I think early in the second quarter I think they went on a 10-0 run or something and we just couldn’t get a shot to fall. We were messing up the switches on the other end and JJ said it this morning, once you give this team a little sliver of whatever, they can just run away with the game and that’s what they did. And that’s why they’re the champions. We’ll watch film and get better from it.”
Reaves is always one to take accountability when he doesn’t play well, and he did that after this one:
“I think it starts with I didn’t play very well. We as a team didn’t play very well. I think you go around the room and everybody would kind of agree with that. So I think if we don’t play well against a team like that, you’re not gonna give yourselves a chance to win. You have to be clicking on all cylinders, locked in to every detail. When you don’t play well, you’re not gonna beat them.”
The Thunder are the defending champs for a reason and look primed to repeat, getting off to a 12-1 start this season. Reaves wants the Lakers to use this blowout loss as motivation to get to Oklahoma City’s level:
“Just use it as motivation. They did what they wanted to do and just to be blunt, they beat the shit out of us tonight. There’s a lot of basketball to be played, we feel as if we can get to that level. Just tonight, we weren’t anywhere close to that. But we do feel like we have the pieces to get there, we just gotta continue to every day try to take a step forward.”
The Lakers are 8-4 on the season which is a good spot to be, especially considering how many injuries they’ve dealt with. The goal for this organization is always to compete for championships though and Reaves knows there’s more work to be done to get there.
Austin Reaves discusses contract situation with Lakers
Austin Reaves is due for a big payday this summer if he can keep up his level of play to start the season. Despite that though, he made it clear that he wants to stay with the Lakers and will not try to get every dollar possible in free agency.
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