Austin Reaves Discussion: How Much Is He Worth?

Well and also the fact that the 2024 Mavs lost that Finals convincingly, largely due to the fact that Kyrie couldn't sustain his production in the Finals against Boston's bigger, more athletic and switchable defenders. Which is the same issue we're seeing with Austin against OKC and others. I think that 2024 Mavs "formula" makes sense (Luka, a scoring guard, lob/rim protecting centers and 3&D wings) but the scoring guard needs to be a better player than 2024 Kyrie or current Austin. It would need to be, ironically, someone like Brunson or Mitchell. In the absence of having a legit, high-end #2 guy like that you need to build the team a different way.

 

i also don't think anyone would be talking about letting markkanen, wagner, white, fox, or lamelo walk in FA, nor trading them for walker kessler.

also, almost all those guys make more than what reaves will make next year.

 

Oh for sure, I've never advocated for letting Austin walk. That would just be dumb. At worst, you sign him to the number you need to sign him to and then try to trade him for a couple of smaller salaries.

 

Hard nosed response to AR's shooting woes last night .... FOH don't care that he's still working back from 1 month not playing and may still be dinged. Reality of course it affects shooting and most everything. See LeBron's play for a month or more after coming back from no on court activity vs what it is now while healthy. Is what it is. But what it also is, all the more reason the new contract is in that 35M ish range as a Laker.

Regarding overrating him .... here is an anonymous players poll from The Atlantic with 81 of them contributing to it. He flunks, not even placing on it .... even in the "others receiving votes" section at the bottom.

While he scores highly in the most underrated counterpart according to 151 participants.

EDIT ..... the copy / pastes with their bar graphics show up here when preparing the post and then don't take when it is. Here's the link below.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/72...e_newsletter&campaign=17913796&userId=8156210

 

Don't waste your breath, @LTLakerFan

 

there are a lot of emotions on the forum today. lots of folks seemingly shocked by us getting beaten handily by okc. uhhhh...yeah...you been asleep for two years?

 

That’s the thing that I personally don’t understand.Why trade him for one person with more production when you can probably get two who fill holes this team has.
For instance what if you could get Murray and Jones from the Pelicans while also signing Watson? Doesn’t that make you a significantly better team with out one single player with better production?

 

They sound like Steven A Smith

 

trade his a** either to Siberia or BC Cherkaski Mavpy

 

The oldest player in the league, is still our 2nd best player, and the most reliable one in the playoffs. That's the conundrum. How do we fix that?

Fwiw..OKC ain't all that without Jalen Williams IMO. A healthy Luka and we can absolutely beat those dudes. This " Oh my God! OKC is incredible " s*** is outta hand. IMHO.

 

because you're creating a bigger, harder-to-fill hole in the process?

it's like we have three 2-foot holes in the yard, and i end up digging a 6-foot hole to fill two of the three holes.

sorry, been doing fence repair this week...

i'm honestly not sure. i think people are underselling the value of a true secondary creator on offense.

i was thinking if you could get murphy and murray or murphy and jones from NO for reaves, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there's also a great chance murphy will have trouble carrying offense in the playoffs (or the regular season, tbh).

lebron's a secondary creator for one more year, maybe. then what? we want luka to be full early-houston-era james harden? that went poorly. it wasn't until harden got cp3 that houston scared anyone. and luka won with brunson and kyrie, respectively. asking him to do it without anyone is a tall order.

the only secondary creators who move lately (e.g., lavine, trae young, etc.) are paid more and are less valuable than reaves. i'd rather dance with the devil i know.

 

no idea. basically zero teams have successfully navigated the end of a hofer's career. boston traded all theirs before they had to deal with it, lol.

we add luka and they add jalen williams, and they're still favored to beat us, rightfully so. they beat us by 20 barely breaking a sweat last night. their third string guards were getting whatever they wanted on offense.

 

Well..Our 1st string guards couldn't buy a bucket..if they could we would have won that game IMO. I think Luka elevates us over them. IF everyone else plays their roles. Smart and Ayton make us a better squad than last season. I'm with SVTR this Thunder squad is beatable.

 

smart and ayton have definitely proven their value in the playoffs. and i do think luka makes a big difference just because they have to defend differently. but they murdered us in the regular season even with him.

 

Our boy deserves the same level of criticism, that AD got, for not being healthy when we need him too bro. It is what it is; we are expecting him to be the 2nd guy, next to our franchise player. That's not quite the same level of expectations Anthony had, but Austin isn't Lebron either.

He's going to be scrutinized differently, from here on out. I'm hoping we give this core one more shot at it, AND go all the way to the 2nd apron if necessary, and bring in one more hitter, (20-30M range) AND at least one more rookie prospect to pair with Adou. f*** it...Walter said money isn't the problem if we can have a legit shot at a ring. Let's just do it!!

 

I don't care Professor...the playoffs are different..we brought those two in for that reason. I believe in Luka. The rest of the crew just need to do their jobs. I believe in them too.

However next season will be another challenge..teams are going to look to get better. I voiced my opinion on that above. Let's go all in! Our owner has money to burn.

 

AR did fine the last game against another tough defense in Houston. Houston was the 6th rank defense and the they had freakin amen thomspon on him.

that being said houston isn't allowed to get away with all the hand checking OKC got but as someone else mentioned can't really complain about the refs as they didn't fall for a lot of the Shai BS either.

The problem I see with AR is he's really got to work on his conditioning and strength - you can clearly see his game regresses especially his shot when he's fatigues (coming off an injury i can live with it) but what's not ok is getting that upper body strength so he can hold off guys like Caruso with his off arm.

Sigh I think all would have been forgiven if he just made that wide open 3 that would have gotten the Lakers to a one possession game. Confidenc and momentum were really flipping to the Lakers and that 6 point swing (AR miss followed by rebound break 3) really seemed to be back breaker and lets' face it if you want the big bucks you got to make the big shots

So put it together I think AR is great and he'll be fine and Lakers will be fine giving him a big contract. but I'm getting frustrated with him focusing so much of his basketball focus on the handle and moves. I've seen him live, he has room to hit the weight room man

 

I also believe a lot of fans are mentally looking at things, from Jeanie's penny pinching viewpoint. We are automatically thinking more conservatively about the apron situations, because of that; Walter is an entirely different animal.

 

OKC is a great team but not a historically great team. At least not yet until Chet and others continue developing.
Pacers were not a great team and took them to 7 games.
Denver took them to 7 games as well.

This is not some unbeatable dynasty team.

I think in a 7 game series, you give LeBron+Luka enough time to gameplan and it's a much different game than some random regular season game where the Lakers are just trying to get through the season healthy.

I don't buy into this notion that with a healthy Luka, the Lakers wouldn't beat OKC. I'd give them a 30-40% chance. Lakers showed game 1 that for the most part, they were right there with OKC.

Reaves simply didn't show up. If they had won game 1 and Luka is able to return in game 3/4, why would the Lakers not be able to beat them?

Simply put, Reaves needs to show up. LeBron got so much s*** for the Lakers not being able to compete with him getting X amount of dollars. He made the changes to fit Luka+Reaves game and is showing up ready and outfperforming as a 41 year old. No excuses. This is the Lakers. Reaves performances would be great if he was on a tanking team. But stars are made in the playoffs for the Lakers and he has not shown up. Now we're supposed to make excuses for a dude in his prime who is trying to get max dollars but hasn't shown up once in the playoffs so far? Injury or not, if he's out there, time to perform. Otherwise, stay in the bench if you aren't at least 90% healthy. ANT is probably not 100% healthy and he showed up to play. If Reaves is healthy enough, I'm tired of hearing about the 'he's injured' excuses. You want max dollars or not? This is not chump change. This is the LAKERS investing in you as a 2nd star. Can you do it or not?

 

Fair enough