Austin Reaves Discussion: How Much Is He Worth?

... 0 in the 2nd

 

Slacker

 

Had to search on line to back up an argument with OX over the never ending Bronny trashing and came up with this link and James's shot chart and interesting ways to look at it. Thought peeps might like a look at Austin's, and pay attention to the darkness of the colors of the shooting areas compared to rest of players, and the size of the circles for preferences and frequencies of his shot attempts.

https://3stepsbasket.com/player/austin-reaves/shooting?season=nba23

 

You’re a good friend.

 

He's been shooting the ball poorly from 3 lately. Hope it finds itself soon in time for the playoffs.

 

….. I can imagine that said by Michael Corleone

 

JJ is running him into the ground with all these minutes . He needs some rest .

 

sorry, but he's just not a max player

 

Booker and Murray are at even higher salary levels? Similar scoring ability but neither one of them could step in and run the Lakers offense as good as AR (scoring aside) when Luka is out or sits. Nor are markedly better, if they even are, on defense.

 

Now who approached you? Cookie or Kenzo?

 

Tessio not good.

 

Laker Douche, in the flesh

 

always disappears against better and more physical teams

a sidekick to luka he is not

 

Come on he had some smack our heads turnovers at the start of the game with 4 total in 27 minutes. As did others including Luka with 6 in 26 minutes, but he competed while clearly in pain from something in his left hip that sent him back to the locker room for a quick spell and back out. Defense on him was tough … sure, but he still got to the rim and scored twice on his blow by drives and had 14 in the 1st half, 15 total (high for the team) on 5-7 and 2-3 from deep, 3-3 FTs and 4 rebounds. Luka had 12 total on 3-10 with 1-7 and 5-6 in 1 less minute before the hamstring happened. Did he “disappear” too?

 

Pete Zayas has been talking about Austin and the Peter Principle for a whole now on LFR, and I agree with him. Clear #2 on a team trying to win a championship is a rung too high for Austin. The lack of athleticism undermines his matchup resilience, which prevents him from the kind of consistent advantage creation against the best defenses that you need out of a clear #2. And that's fine, all that means is he's like the 30-35th best player in the league, not the 15-20th. Barring trading him for a clear #2 guy, which seems extremely unlikely, it needs to be a 2a/2b situation where we have another player about the same caliber as Austin that can slide into the #2 spot against certain matchups. Which is basically what we already have with LeBron.

For any game we play against OKC, and probably the Spurs too, LeBron should be the 2nd option. If you go back to the games in OKC at the end of last season, that's how we were successful against them. Luka and LeBron were very deliberate in getting smaller defenders like Caruso and Wallace switched onto them, getting to their spots, forcing help and rotation and hitting those cross-court passes. Trying to spam high P&R with Austin against OKC is a recipe for failure, which we have now seen multiple times. He needs to be playing off the other two guys in this matchup.

 

It’s kind of a given that highly athletic defenses give AR problems. Super athletic defenders can block him when he gets by them whereas perimeter players can stop him getting to his spots and force turnovers.

I’ve always thought that AR should work on his catch and shoot against these kind of teams and attacking close outs or rotations.

But if you take him out as a ball handler against the handful of teams that can slow him down. You need another ball handler to step up. Once LeBron’s gone, who is that?

 

That's why we need another ballhandler. Preferably one that is a good facilitator. It will be interesting to see how Redick uses Austin moving forward.