To the surprise of many this offseason, the first player the Los Angeles Lakers signed in free agency was wing Jake LaRavia, an under-the-radar player who had yet to make a big splash in the league. Not only that, but Lakers head coach JJ Redick recently revealed that LaRavia was the first call he made once free agency began.
LaRavia’s strong play to begin the season has been a revelation for the Lakers as he has quickly established himself as one of the team’s most reliable role players. He does a bit of everything on both ends of the court and has earned the trust of Redick.
But had it not been for that initial phone call this all may not have happened. LaRavia’s agent Aaron Reilly took to social media and spoke about that call, noting that Redick and Rob Pelinka went into such detail that they knew the Lakers were the team for LaRavia the moment they hung up the phone:
The level of detail JJ and Rob went into on that call was unmatched. JJ knew his game better than anyone. I actually thought Jake was going to end up on another team. However, as soon as we hung up, Jake, Reg and I knew LA was the spot for Jake. Amazing moment@TheRealReggieB https://t.co/cuGFgpE7oZ
— Aaron Reilly (@AMRAgency) November 10, 2025
Redick is an absolute basketball junkie so being able to go into great detail about a player’s game and how it could fit with the Lakers should really come as no surprise. Even still, it is impressive to hear how that impacted LaRavia and his team and made it obvious where he needed to wind up.
Clearly it was the right decision as LaRavia is putting up career-high numbers across the board and will be an important piece of the Lakers rotation going forward this season.
Lakers’ Jake LaRavia thanks Anthony Edwards for viral ‘who is number 12?’ moment
One of the moments that truly put Jake LaRavia on everyone’s radar was his outstanding performance in the Lakers’ recent victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves prompting a fan to yell out ‘Who is number 12?’ to which Timberwolves superstar Anthony Edwards hilariously responded that he didn’t know either. And LaRavia took the moment all in stride.
“I kind of put my hands up like this to agree with him, like who’s number 12?” LaRavia said. “I kind of played into it a little bit. I find that kind of stuff funny, because I am not well known at this moment, so I’ll just, you know, head down, working hard. That’s all I do.”
The Lakers wing would go on to thank Edwards for helping the moment go viral.
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