Originally published by LakersNation.com
The growth of Austin Reaves into an All-Star caliber player for the Los Angeles Lakers this season has been truly amazing to watch. Reaves has grown from a glue-guy type of player to a legitimate on-ball creator who consistently gets great looks for himself and his teammates.
While Reaves is considered by most as a shooting guard, especially when alongside Luka Doncic, he has a lot of point guard skills, and is clearly comfortable operating in that capacity. And that is no accident as Reaves grew up playing the point guard position and that has always been his dream position, as he spoke about on the Mind the Game podcast with LeBron James and Steve Nash:
“Playing alongside my brother freshman and sophomore year, he took a majority of the shots so my job was to [get him the ball]. That year, we played like an actual white team, we ran set after set, we would get him threes after threes after threes. He left, and we just started running. We were like we’re going to press and run. I always wanted to be a point guard.
“I was basically point guard from when I started playing basketball until I went to college, and then going to college, you run into guys that are three or four years older than you, more physically gifted and better players at the time. I never had a problem with buying in to a role to help the team be successful. My freshman year, I think I scored four points a game, I might have played 11 minutes a game and then it just kind of trended forward after that.
“Sophomore year, I got more time. I was able to be myself a little more but still all about what I could do to help us win. We had a really good team my sophomore year at Wichita State, we were preseason third in the country. We had a really, really good team. But that all came crumbling down, we got beat the first round of the tournament.
“From then on out, I understood that I’m going to run into guys that are better than me. It’s no different than in the NBA, like there’s going to be times on a night-to-night basis where [LeBron] and Luka got it going. So what can I do to plug and play and help our team win? I think that’s the beautiful thing about basketball is you don’t have to go out and score 30 to affect the game, you can do a lot of things.”
As Reaves noted, his older brother Spencer was the best player on his high school team initially and Spencer would go on to play collegiately at Central Missouri and is still playing professionally overseas today. But the biggest thing for Reaves has been his willingness to adapt to whatever role his team needs.
Reaves cares about winning more than anything else and he will do whatever it takes to make his team successful. Now for this Lakers team what they need from him just so happens to be him playing the way he loves to play most.
Austin Reaves discusses his ability to draw fouls
One skill that Reaves does as well as anyone in the league today is his ability to draw fouls and the Lakers guard spoke on why he is able to do so, and his purpose behind playing the way he does.
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? It’s the best way to watch player interviews, exclusive coverage from events, participate in live shows, and more!
The growth of Austin Reaves into an All-Star caliber player for the Los Angeles Lakers this season has been truly amazing to watch. Reaves has grown from a glue-guy type of player to a legitimate on-ball creator who consistently gets great looks for himself and his teammates.
While Reaves is considered by most as a shooting guard, especially when alongside Luka Doncic, he has a lot of point guard skills, and is clearly comfortable operating in that capacity. And that is no accident as Reaves grew up playing the point guard position and that has always been his dream position, as he spoke about on the Mind the Game podcast with LeBron James and Steve Nash:
“Playing alongside my brother freshman and sophomore year, he took a majority of the shots so my job was to [get him the ball]. That year, we played like an actual white team, we ran set after set, we would get him threes after threes after threes. He left, and we just started running. We were like we’re going to press and run. I always wanted to be a point guard.
“I was basically point guard from when I started playing basketball until I went to college, and then going to college, you run into guys that are three or four years older than you, more physically gifted and better players at the time. I never had a problem with buying in to a role to help the team be successful. My freshman year, I think I scored four points a game, I might have played 11 minutes a game and then it just kind of trended forward after that.
“Sophomore year, I got more time. I was able to be myself a little more but still all about what I could do to help us win. We had a really good team my sophomore year at Wichita State, we were preseason third in the country. We had a really, really good team. But that all came crumbling down, we got beat the first round of the tournament.
“From then on out, I understood that I’m going to run into guys that are better than me. It’s no different than in the NBA, like there’s going to be times on a night-to-night basis where [LeBron] and Luka got it going. So what can I do to plug and play and help our team win? I think that’s the beautiful thing about basketball is you don’t have to go out and score 30 to affect the game, you can do a lot of things.”
As Reaves noted, his older brother Spencer was the best player on his high school team initially and Spencer would go on to play collegiately at Central Missouri and is still playing professionally overseas today. But the biggest thing for Reaves has been his willingness to adapt to whatever role his team needs.
Reaves cares about winning more than anything else and he will do whatever it takes to make his team successful. Now for this Lakers team what they need from him just so happens to be him playing the way he loves to play most.
Austin Reaves discusses his ability to draw fouls
One skill that Reaves does as well as anyone in the league today is his ability to draw fouls and the Lakers guard spoke on why he is able to do so, and his purpose behind playing the way he does.
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? It’s the best way to watch player interviews, exclusive coverage from events, participate in live shows, and more!
