I never bashed him, but I never thought he'd be this good. I thought his ceiling was a solid role player, not an allstar level player like he's been playing the past month or so. The one caveat is his performance in the playoffs. If he can break out this year, I'd keep him at all costs. If not, I will be open to trading him for the right piece.
I don’t remember a ton of hate for AR. It’s hard to hate on someone that continually exceeds expectations and I believe the expectations have always been lower than what he is capable of. Even now I think he can be an all star.
With all perimeter defense focusing their eyes on Bron and Luka, he's going to cook these lesser opponents. He started getting the respect of the best perimeter defender...can't do that anymore.
I remember thinking that I had doubts he would exceed Caruso, the man we let go in order to keep him instead or so it felt like that at the time to me at the end of the day, they are very different players that excel in their roles,, and Laker’s scouting truly rocks.
There was nothing wrong with it if we’re honest and logical. The mocking over it is fun and all with the origination of the dead guy jokes. He got a s****y injury that just kept him out all damn season. If he’d been healthy and looked anything like what we scouted him as going to provide for us it was a good trade. Same scouting and decision making MO as had been serving us exceedingly well for better part of a decade.
…. and doing THAT thing you and I went round and round on with Max … who’s 5 years from his prime. “Career capping” a young, still developing, very talented and hard working player. That happened a lot with AR.
Yeah LOL. Played so well against Warriors too that Kerr was forever smitten with him. 2 years ago. Last year against the Nuggets he played very well too.
Only getting paid $12-13 million as well. I can't name a better contract player than Reaves right now. He can rotate between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd option fluidly and not be upset. Sometimes you see players who are very capable of being the 1st/2nd option get upset when they are sidelined into a 3rd-4th-5th option but Reaves has no issues doing so. You can see the trust LeBron has in him to the point where he gladly defers to Reaves for long stretches of the game. I'm more impressed by his 3 point shooting. He's shooting high volume and hitting them at a very efficient clip.
https://www.statmuse.com/nba/ask/austin-reaves-playoff-stats Austin Reaves has averaged 16.9 points, 4.3 assists, and 4.3 rebounds in 21 career playoff games with the Los Angeles Lakers.
No I bashed it before he became a dead guy. Short guy who with Spoelstra magic got a good start to his pro career but the Heat as soon as they got better talent turned him into a bench player. Red flags with that signing from day one.
People here want to turn Reaves into a bench guy. ?? OK scoreboard you but doesn't negate the track record of the scouting and player evaluations processes that has served us well for a decade. JHS was a fail and Nunn too, being that he's overseas lighting it up and not in the NBA. Same thing was then dumped on Vincent but turns out they were right on that one.