After a strong 3-0 start to the season, the Los Angeles Lakers now find themselves at .500 thanks to going just 1-4 on their five-game road trip. Austin Reaves was solid throughout most of the trip, providing good offensive output for the most part, though he also had some tough matchups defensively.
Regardless of Reaves’ individual performances, however, the Lakers as a whole were not up to par, especially over the final couple games of the road trip being outworked by both the Detroit Pistons and Memphis Grizzlies. Head coach JJ Redick had a message to the Lakers following the loss to the Grizzlies, and Reaves agreed with his coach, feeling that they failed to execute the game plans laid out to them.
“That we have to be better with basically every aspect of the game,” Reaves said of Redick’s message. “But the main thing was just competing and following the game plan. They lay out good stuff for us to go execute and we just haven’t done that on this trip. We got to go home, look ourselves in the mirror and do better.”
Reaves would continue on, noting his and the Lakers’ frustrations about their shortcomings on this road trip.
“It’s frustrating,” Reaves added. “You want to win every game, but on this road trip, it’s not what we wanted to do, obviously. But I think you can take little things good here and there throughout this road trip. Obviously LeBron tonight was really good. Me and DLo, especially, have to be better to help him in nights that we don’t have AD.”
Reaves was solid against the Grizzlies with 19 points, three rebounds, five assists and three steals, though Russell managed only 12 points and was even called out by Redick after the game. One of the other things Redick mentioned after the game was the Lakers’ lack of attention to detail and Reaves was again on the same page as his coach.
“I think it’s attention to detail,” Reaves said when asked what he learned on the trip. “We’ve been talking about that since day one. I don’t feel like our attention to detail has been good, transition defense has been bad. Now we have an opportunity to go home and be at home and have a couple practices and try to fix those things. But just the attention to detail, all of the little things that we have shown we can do, just haven’t done them on this trip.”
The Lakers have a chance to go home and try to turn things around, but it will take the efforts of everyone on the roster. Reaves has a lot of responsibility on this squad, but the team as a whole must lock in across the board if they plan on competing this season.
Austin Reaves feels Lakers can’t let shooting struggles bleed into other areas
Against the Grizzlies, the Lakers shot a season-high 48 3-pointers but made just 31.3% from deep, which is obviously discouraging. But Austin Reaves feels their shooting struggles affected the rest of the Lakers’ game, which should never happen.
“It’s frustrating. But it shouldn’t bleed into other areas. There’s a million different ways you can help your team win games and we just haven’t done those on this road trip. Like I said, it’s frustrating, obviously. I would say 95% of us are perfectionists. I get mad when I miss one shot.
“But it’s the reality of the game. If you make four out of 10 3s, you’re a really good shooter. So you keep shooting them with a high level of confidence and trust the work that you put in. But like I said, there’s a million different things during the game that you can do to help your team win.”
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