After a promising win in Oklahoma City, the Los Angeles Lakers weren’t able to keep that momentum going on Christmas Day. The Lakers got off to an awful start and ultimately fell to the Boston Celtics, dropping their fifth game in the last six contests.
Throughout the season, the Lakers have gotten the expected contributions from LeBron James and Anthony Davis, while Austin Reaves has thrived in his sixth man role. But they have struggled to find the right rotations and lineups as the team has gotten healthy. Even still, Reaves has not lost confidence in the Lakers going forward, even as the Lakers are frustrated at the losses.
“Yeah, I mean, losing is never what you want to do. You don’t want to make that the norm,” Reaves said following the loss to Boston. “So anytime you lose, you’re frustrated. There’s always things we can do to be better.
“But like I was just listening to Coach [Ham] talk about how we haven’t been full. It’s not an excuse but it’s hard to have that chemistry and really know, have that knowing factor of kind of what you’re doing at all times. Once we get that, we’ll be fine.”
And what gives Reaves confidence in the Lakers’ ability to figure things out is how they finished last season. “You go back to last year and kind of how we figured things out late in the year and ran with it,” the Lakers guard added. “I feel like we, at that time, had a real good understanding of what we were, who we were and what we were doing every single night. Unfortunately for the first part of this year, we didn’t have that lineup to start to kind of plant that foundation.”
Injuries and players coming in and out of the lineup has forced constant lineup and rotation changes. It is something everyone on the Lakers has pointed to and while nobody in the locker room simply accepts that as an excuse, it doesn’t mean that doesn’t have an impact.
But Reaves continues to believe in this group overall if they can just tweak a couple things.
“Obviously us as a group, me personally, I think we can beat any team that steps on the floor,” Reaves noted. “If you don’t have that outlook then what are we doing? But we have that outlook, we just got to tighten some things up and kind of just get that foundation planted and run with that.
“But anytime we step on the floor, we feel confident with what we got and the talent and the opportunity to win games.”
The Lakers have shown at times this season that they can hang with and beat very good teams. The issue has been consistency. Finding that consistent rotation and the right lineups to bring the best out of everyone will be key to the Lakers turning things around.
Lakers coach Darvin Ham likes D’Angelo Russell-Austin Reaves pairing off the bench
One move that was made recently was the insertion of Jarred Vanderbilt into the starting lineup with D’Angelo Russell moving to the bench. This brings the Russell and Reaves pairing back together, but as a reserve unit, something head coach Darvin Ham likes.
The Lakers coach believes Reaves and Russell together off the bench will allow that second unit to play faster and give them a lot of variety in how they can attack teams offensively.
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? It’s the best way to watch player interviews, exclusive coverage from events, participate in live shows, and more!
