Austin Reaves Discussion: How Much Is He Worth?

The simplest explanation for Jake's drop off is dead legs. He's played more minutes this season (2064 acareer high) than in his last two seasons combined..damn near double that number.

 

Anyone who has watched these first two games knows that trading our secondary playmaker (and current primary playmaker) for a couple of role players isn’t going to get it done against OKC or SA.

 

Anyone who watched the first two games has seen OKC role players steam roll the Lakers.JWill isn’t playing and SGA has been giving up the ball because of double teams.Ajay Mitchell (3rd best playmaker on OKC) is destroying.So yeah having a team better than having 1 guy

 

I actually think Mitchell is a future all star. He’s a 25 pt scorer with 5/5 and 2 steals hiding on OKC’s bench. I’d trade Jake (for salary matching) and 3 firsts for him.

When we look back on it, we’ll say OKC was loaded: SGA, J Dubb, Chet were all stars, Dort was a great defender, Hart was a great center, then they had Wallace - one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and Ajay Mitchell an all star on the bench. Plus other complementary guys.

As for Reaves, great bounce back game. If he can play like this consistently from here on. (2 or more games), he goes a long way to squashing those playoff rumours. If he regresses, we still have to keep asking the question.

 

I (think) too with regard to his handles he may have come into this season a couple of years in the league now, having probably worked further on them this past summer .... feeling pretty good about them. All season you could see him wanting to try to be a little or even lot more aggressive with them than his role actually requires. Not a bad thing in itself but getting to his first late season important push and playoffs against 2 of the very toughest defensive teams is exposing that the level he's at to try and do that stuff is not there yet.