Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves has improved every single season he has been in the NBA and is now widely considered one of the best offensive guards in the league. Going from an undrafted player on a two-way contract to this level is something that very few players in the history of the league has experienced.
Many young people dream of making the NBA, but most never come close to realizing that goal. For many, however, they reach a point where they realize that dream can become a reality and for Reaves that time came when he was playing at the University of Oklahoma courtesy of legendary head coach Lon Kruger, as he revealed on the latest episode of the “Mind the Game” podcast with LeBron James and Steve Nash:
“I mean, I always had like delusional confidence. The weirdest story was, I was, like I said, I’m from a town of a thousand people and there’s nothing to do so you hunt, you fish, you do all the country stuff. I don’t remember this, but my mom’s best friend at the time took me hunting one day and we were sitting there talking and she was like, ‘What do you wanna do?’ I’m probably nine years old and she was like ‘What do you wanna do when you get older’ and I was like, ‘Oh, I wanna play in the NBA,’ and she was like, ‘You mean the MLB?’ And I was like ‘Nah, I wanna play in the NBA.’ And she was like ‘It was the craziest thing because you played, but you didn’t really like actually play.’ But it really came to reality, I was at Oklahoma and Lon Kruger followed me out of practice one day and told me ‘I think you can be a first-round pick.’ And he’s been around basketball forever. He’s coached Buddy [Hield], Trae [Young] … He’s seen everything and once he said that I was like, ‘Oh I got a chance.'”
Kruger had a 35-year head coaching career winning 674 games and owning a win percentage of just under 61% for his college career, most notably at Oklahoma and Florida. As Reaves noted, Kruger has coached the likes of Buddy Hield and Trae Young, as well as Mitch Richmond in college, and also coached the Atlanta Hawks from 2000-2003. So him telling Reaves that he could not only play in the league, but be a first-round pick, holds a lot of weight.
While Reaves wasn’t a first-round pick, he has outperformed many of them over his NBA career and is now set to be paid like one of the NBA’s top players and deservedly so.
LeBron James reveals what he first saw in Austin Reaves
The one player who has been teammates with Austin Reaves throughout his career is LeBron James and the all-time great revealed what he saw in Reaves when he first joined the Lakers.
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