Then after AR pops off Lebron gets to play the easiest basketball maybe of his career

Literally.

Even Bron has been coasting by on his reputation.

Dude will draw a double on 3x as many possessions as he tries to score on.

Still don’t understand if doubling luka/Bron/jokic is a legit trusted strategy or just a team crossing their fingers.

His lob game could use some work

Not to ☝️🤓 but technically a foil contrasts the main character (Luka in this case) so a “foil” would be more like an Anthony Davis or Rudy gobert more so; someone who contrasts their skillset by having an opposing skillset or abilities

From a highly esteemed Laker contributor, Darius Soriano:

“Per the NBA’s tracking data, of players who have played 5 games or more & post at least 10 drives per game, austin reaves leads the entire nba in field goal percentage on shots taken on drives at 68.5%. second is giannis (67.1%). third is luka (64.9%).”

The idea that Austin Reaves is some aberration is done with at this point. He is absolutely an All-NBA level player. It might take a few more months for the rest of the league to realize it but he is absolutely that.

AustHIM.

For real. It genuinely feels like he does not miss when he drives for the layup

AR is also elite at finishing strong through contact…and with either hand. He’s appears ambidextrous, even if he’s not naturally.

Those that say he has trouble with physical defenses haven’t been watching enough.

He added muscle this off-season and it’s paying off when he drives

IIRC he had the highest layup makes percentage 2 seasons ago

Kinda insane career trajectory

The craziest part is that no team forced the lakers to match the max offer. 

He chose to be undrafted right? What was he projected to go?

I’m getting flashbacks from that season. People were saying TREVOR ARIZA was the missing piece

I dont know why Ham didn’t like AR and refused to start him or play him in crunch time.

Snow Gilgeous Alexander

If Reaves could only replicate his defense. Seeing the Pels go on those runs targeting Reaves and Luka was kind of sad.

If Reaves were a good athlete he would be SGA

In his first few seasons I often felt like he moves in curry esque and Shai esque ways.

One of the best in the league at the the hesitation, fast slow fast moves

All nba

He’s averaging 29/6/7 (on 52/36/88 shooting splits) which are better raw stats than every All NBA 3rd team guard last year except maybe Cade and also better raw stats than 2nd team guards. Not saying by any means he’s better than those players, but stats play a very large story in All Star and All NBA voting and it’d be crazy to leave him out of both if he maintains this form

2nd team lowkey hard as fuck to guess. Maxey, Cade, Donovan, Ant, Brunson, Jaylen, Reaves, all are playing good that 1 one of them can be first team if Wemby misses more time or gets outplayed by any of them.

Although yeah Reaves is probably top 2 here minimum.

Nah. If he makes all nba it fucks with the cap.. honorable mention is good enough 😳

I mean to be totally honest it’s basically 1A and 1B. Luka’s got the ball more but that’s because he’s a better point guard. But Austin has a total green light to do whatever he wants

Which he realistically should be. Dude his defence has improved too. No he’s not blocking five shots like Jaylin in OKC did, but AR has almost a steal a game, and a block here and there too.

Robot

Forgetting All NBA.

He went from undrafted two way player to 2nd option on the team currently ranked #2 in the west.

I think that’s why so many fans, even non-lakers recognize. Everyone loves a rags to riches story.

We’re not beating OKC with Rui on this roster, his problem isn’t efficiency, it’s lack of foot speed, rim protection, and rebounding. He’s a good player (and I was doubter for a long time), but the starting lineup is not great with Rui (and it’s not his fault either). As long as LeBron is on the roster Rui is way too redundant. We def need a trade to compete with OKC, and I think Rui is our most valuable and expendable player. 

Every other team seems beatable though. Denver is better than us too but we can create issues for them defensively that they can’t deal with, plus their guys have had injury issues. If Smart was like 5 years younger it would solve most of our problems tbh. 

Yeah, imagine if they still had Caruso.

Remember when kuzman was their 3rd best player behind Ad and LeBron. What happen to him.

See that’s where you have to be careful. They are kinda training AR to be the Kyrie of this team, with ofcourse being an awesome PG with insane handles and ability to create his own shots. But also being THE guy in the fourth.

Mavs had that great run because Kyrie used to come alive in the fourth. AR has been able to do that so far (and I think he has to be one of the best fourth quarter scorers this season), but playoffs are a different beast and the defence will be tougher.

I am an AR truther who has been saying that AR can take over the playoffs in his own way. Just commented this a few minutes ago. But doing good in playoffs, and doing it the Kyrie way, you’d want quite a few things to go right. That’s things like some trades for defenders, health of the team, how fresh they are, how gassed the other team is etc.

When’s the last time a team let a young all nba caliber player walk?

The lakers issue with Caruso was never about money despite what people say. We were perfectly capable of paying both him and THT that summer. It’s been confirmed by people who were in the org (and other lakers reporters) that the front office simply didn’t think Caruso was that good. They thought his skillset was easily replaceable and they didn’t understand how impactful his defense was. And that ofc is much worse because it means we’re dumb af. 

The good thing is that the front office has always overvalued offensive guards (not saying AR is overvalued either, he’s worth the max) and Reaves is a big W for them going from undrafted > star. We have his bird rights so we can pay him the max. There is 0% chance they will let him walk unless our new owner keeps firing people and the new ppl don’t believe in Austin.