The Los Angeles Lakers’ rising star Austin Reaves stunned the NBA once more, sinking a 12-foot buzzer-beating floater to lift L.A. past the Anthony Edwards-less Minnesota Timberwolves, 116–115. Coming off career-best performances of 51 and 41 points in consecutive games earlier this week, Reaves continues to prove what he can do when given the keys to the offense, and he’s making sure the league takes notice.
Through five games this season, Reaves is putting up NBA-All-Star caliber numbers, averaging 34.2 points per game, grabbing 5.6 rebounds, and dishing out 10 assists per game while shooting 53 percent from the floor. Although the season is still very young, has Reaves emerged as a top 20 player in the NBA?
Has Austin Reaves Officially Entered the NBA’s Top 20 Player Conversation?
If you look at the analytics, the answer is an easy yes, as Reaves is the only player in the NBA ranked in the Top 5 in scoring and assists. Since being unofficially anointed as the temporary leader of the current Lakers due to the injuries to the Lakers’ superstars, LeBron James and Luka Dončić, Reaves is averaging 40 points and 10 assists per game on 50 percent shooting from the field and 41 percent from three-point land in the Lakers’ last three games.
As a result, he joins Jerry West as the only Lakers in franchise history to score 25 points or more and average five or more assists through their team’s first five games.
“It’s fun, I love to play the game of basketball, obviously I wouldn’t be able to do any of it without the coaching staff believing in me and my teammates believing in me,” Reaves said in an on-court interview with ESPN after the Lakers’ victory.
“Having so much joy playing basketball is fun.”
After a big close to his 2024 season, Reaves is taking full advantage of his opportunity to run the show. You will be hard-pressed to find five players in the NBA playing better basketball than him right now. While most people nationally are just getting familiar with Reaves’ productive work, Lakers fans and head coach J.J. Redick have already known what the man “AR 15” is about.
“To me he’s established himself as a bad dude, he did that last year,” Redick said during his postgame press conference. “League wide he was viewed as a really good player, but last year he established himself as a bad dude and this is who he is as he had that three-month stretch or whatever it is where he averaged 22, 7 and 6. But for me the big thing is he’s established himself as the leader or one of the big leaders on the court, That’s big time and that’s what we want and need from him.”
Reaves has never made an All-Star or All-NBA team during his four-year career, but that could all change this season if he can remain locked in and keep up his eye-popping production.
