The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their third loss of the preseason on Tuesday night against the Golden State Warriors despite playing with their full strength starting lineup. All of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Rui Hachimura, D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves played, with the last of the five on a minutes restriction.
Reaves missed the Lakers’ sole preseason win thus far due to an ankle injury. Despite it being deemed not serious and not expected to affect Reaves’ ability to play in the regular season, L.A. is being extra cautious. He played 17 minutes on Tuesday night with a limit of around 18 from head coach JJ Redick and the medical staff.
The fourth-year Lakers guard spoke about how he felt during the game while on a minutes restriction, and if he in theory could have played more.
“Yeah, it felt good,” Reaves said. “I just liked getting out there and playing. When they told me 15-18 minutes, obviously like cool. When I got out there I was like ‘I want to play more.’ But you stick to what the script is and trust the medical staff to put me in the best position to be healthy for the whole year.
“So I felt good, feel good now. Feel like I could’ve played more but like I said, you stick to the script. Those guys are professionals and we had a plan going into the game and executed the plan and felt really good.”
As for the losing effort, Reaves felt that much of the first half — the part of the game he played in — came down to missing open opportunities. The Lakers starters outside of Davis combined to go 13-of-41 from the field, with Reaves scoring 13 points on 3-for-8 shooting and a minus-10 on the night.
“I think we got a lot of really good shots in the first half. I didn’t see much of the third quarter, I was icing in the back. But I feel like in the first half we got good looks and we just didn’t make them tonight.
“You just got to stay confident shooting them, trusting the work that you’ve been putting in and trust the system that we have to generate us those good looks. We’ll make them when it matters.”
Preseason records are hardly a concern for NBA teams, but the Lakers need to ensure that when the times comes, they actually are hitting their open looks. This has been an issue for L.A. for the past couple seasons, not converting on high-percentage opportunities.
But getting Reaves back as a full-time contributor not on a minutes restriction should be good for guaranteeing that those open looks continue to come.
Austin Reaves ranked No. 72 on NBArank
Austin Reaves went from 64 games played and 22 starts in 2022-23 to 82 games played with 57 starts in 2023-24. And this year, he is almost certain to start in just about every game he plays with JJ Redick at the helm.
Reaves was benched for a portion of the season due to a slow start that saw him averaging 13.1 points on 41.6% from the field and 27.8% from three in the first eight games of the year. He returned to the starting lineup full time on Jan. 3, and with proper utilization and his legs under him, he ascended.
He averaged 16.4 points and 5.9 assists on 49.2% from the field and 37.3% from beyond the arc in the last 48 games of the regular season, establishing himself as not only one of the Lakers’ best all-around players, but a legitimate on-ball threat capable of running an NBA offense.
However, the early part of the season lasted in the minds of the NBA world, leading to a six-spot drop in ESPN’s annual NBARank list for 2024-25. Reaves went from No. 66 to No. 72 in this year’s edition.
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