Austin Reaves Discussion: Overachiever Who Underachieved

You definitely have to consider trading Reaves. Him and Luka can’t play together going forward. He’s either gotta come off the bench or be traded. I was so disappointed by what we see from him during this series.

 

I don't know I though his underperformance actually cost the Lakers at least 2 games.

Game 4 for sure he had a ton of open looks which bricked and even yesterday the unforced TO's and yet again missed open shots. These games were not blowouts - AR gets you 1-2 more big shots and 1-2 less TO's and it's a different series TBH

And no I don't want to trade him - he remains the best contract in the league but a spade is a spade. I had him as possibly the 4th best player going into the series and he ended up where maybe the 8th (Ant, Luka, Lebron, Randle, Reed, McDaniels, Gobert all pretty clearly outperformed him). That's a steep drop in performance vs expectation. If you told me he was going to play about at the same level as Divencenzo going into the series, I would have said the Lakers were going to be toast and they did become toast

 

Well the thing that needs to be acknowledged is that he's going to need a new contract soon. He's under contract next season for $14 million, but then he has a PO for the following year. There is a zero percent chance that he picks up that PO. He's going to want a new contract probably north of $30 million, so the question is do you commit to Austin as a long-term piece next to look at over $30 million APY, or do you move him now when his contract is smaller/more attractive.

 

It's really on him now. Hes got room to work in terms of his fitness. And the benefits of added fitness strength and conditioning would have made a big difference in this series.

He's not going to become an athletic freak but it will help him handle the physicality of the playoffs

 

His HC didn't exactly put him in the best position, to succeed in this series either. IMO. NO! Cookie and OX!! Slick is not, just trying to make excuses for Austin either.

It's the playoffs, teams study what you do best, they think of ways to try to take away or limit some of those things. Lebron and Luka are superstars, it's harder to affect them, Austin is not. It shouldn't have been a secret that Minnesota was going to come after him. We seemed to be surprised by it, and we never really made any adjustments to combat that strategy.

I don't give Austin a blanket pass here, but it's not all on him either....IMHO

 

it's still a year away, and i actually have questions about whether the teams who actually have that to spend will spend it on him. similar to when he was RFA and nobody wanted to go to the 4/100. i just feel like if no one would even test that, why would they bother clearing their decks to offer north of 30 per for a guy who's unlikely to be a #2 guy. remember that most teams with that much money to spend are more than an austin reaves away from contention.

my guess--assuming we keep him (i think we should)--is that he signs a multi-year deal closer to averaging 25 a year after next season.

 

20 plus is fair, for him and us, he gets paid, and if for some reason things don't work out, that contract is very valuable in a trade down the line.

 

i didn't think about this before, but i wonder if the lakers don't offer an extension this summer. i believe he's eligible. we can offer up to 5/100ish. that would take him through age 32 season, i think.

as slick said, he's likely to be tradeable on that deal, barring major injury.

why would he do it? imo, for that reason--if he gets hurt next year, he could leave a lot of cash on the table. and if he stagnates at this point, the thought of a bigger deal is out the window anyway.

i'd probably offer the biggest deal i could as a show of good faith. that could at least help head off "they don't respect me" stuff a la jalen brunson in dallas. even if reaves never got better, he's worth 20 per, no question.

 

You could also add "no answer for ANT" to that list.

A trade package of AR/Vando/Knecht/2031 1st could potentially solve most of our issues.

 

Biggest underachiever of the series

 

I Love Reaves, but you can't play him & Luka together in the backcourt. That might be the worst defensive backcourt in the League.
Either Reaves becomes our 6th man & runs the bench or we have to trade him... Unfortunate truth.

 

All running on fumes in the 4th quarter. Meanwhile, JJ is talking about how guys need to be in " Championship condition ".

Now that's some Pat Riley mentality. We shall see how that goes over with the players next season.

 

Hey wait a minute didn’t we hate Ham for his small ball, now JJ went bat**** crazy with it

 

Reaves can easily open his mouth and say if JJ have any offensive schemes, that the game will be easier on everyone. Instead of iso ball.