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LOS ANGELES – In the Los Angeles Lakers' last two games, they've been without one or the other of their superstar duo of LeBron James and Anthony Davis. During the Lakers' win against the Golden State Warriors on Christmas, Davis didn't finish the game due to an injury scare, while James didn't suit up against the Sacramento Kings on Saturday due to illness. Enter Austin Reaves, who most recently had a career-high mark in assists in the Lakers' 132-122 win against the Kings.
With Davis sidelined in the second half against the Warriors, Reaves picked it up on the glass with 10 rebounds to go along with his 26 points and 10 assists in what was his first career triple-double. With James out of the lineup against the Kings, Reaves picked up in terms of playmaking, dishing out 16 assists.
Following the Lakers win against the Kings on Saturday, Austin Reaves spoke about the mentality needed in order for him to get those career-high 16 assists.
“Basically my whole life before I went to college, I really enjoyed passing the ball. My freshman year and sophomore year in high school, my brother was our best player on the high school team and my job was to get him the ball,” Reaves said. “I really enjoyed creating for others, getting everybody going and just helping the team be successful. It's always been for me, just making the right play.”
Reaves did just that against the Kings, finding his teammates play after play and staying one step ahead of the Kings' defense.
Austin Reaves' as Lakers' full-time point guard
When the Lakers moved D'Angelo Russell to the bench earlier this season, that signaled their comfort level with Reaves as the team's primary point guard. That belief was solidified even more so with the Lakers' trading Russell to the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday. In fact, it was the aforementioned games from Reaves that reportedly made the Lakers more comfortable with trading Russell.
While Reaves certainly deserves a lot of credit for keeping the ball moving and finding scoring opportunities for his teammates, Reaves had a simple answer for why he was able to rack up a career-high in assists.
“Obviously when you make shots, I made a comment there that someone said something about the 16 assists, the majority of the time the hard thing is not to throw the ball to the open guy,” Reaves said. “It's probably harder to make the shot than to throw it to the guy. When guys are making shots, you see the assist but it's really them doing all the work.”
This season, Reaves has appeared in 26 games for the Lakers, missing a brief stretch of five games when he was dealing with a pelvic injury. He's been averaging 17.7 points, 4.2 rebound, 5.5 assists and 1.0 steals with splits of 44.4 percent shooting from the field, 36.3 percent shooting from the three-point line and 79.4 percent shooting from the free-throw line.
The Lakers went 2-3 in the games he missed, and following the win against the Kings, JJ Redick spoke about Reaves' importance to the team.
“The wiggle, the ability to touch the paint in the halfcourt, the ability to get two on the ball, that's huge for us. When we're stagnant and slow, we can't get two on the ball, we have harder time touching the paint and we end up with a bad shot profile and end up in a lot of butter situations. That's just not how we want to play offense,” Redick said. “Austin is vital to us being able to touch the paint. He's vital to us being able to get into the blender.”
