Lakers News: ESPN Pundits Believe Austin Reaves Deserves Sixth Man Of The Year Consideration
During a recent episode of his podcast The Lowe Post, ESPN's Zach Lowe spoke with Sports Illustrated's Chris Herring about several top 2023 Sixth Man of the Year award candidates.
Ex-Los Angeles Lakers bench point guard Russell Westbrook is obviously off the board now. But another current Laker was highlighted by Lowe and Herring for his strong 2022-23 season: 6'5" second-year shooting guard Austin Reaves.
To qualify for the honor, Reaves will need to have played 60% of his games with LA off the bench this year. Though he was recently promoted to a starting gig with the club as one of its better two-way perimeter players, Reaves will not have started in enough games by season's end to disqualify himself from the honor.
Even if Reaves starts for his team's final seven regular season games, he will have still appeared in 65.6% of the Lakers' games this season as a bench player, meaning he'd still be eligible for the award.
He has over the last six weeks amped it up as a scorer and sort of shed the 'Oh my god, I'm playing with these guys' deference, and I think he needs to keep that mindset... because he can score well enough off the dribble that he's a threat. If defenses treat him as a threat, it's going to open up his passing which is maybe his best skill."
This year, the swingman out of Oklahoma University is averaging 12.3 points on .514/.378/.857 shooting splits, and 0.5 steals a night.
"I think he's in the conversation for a ballot spot, for Sixth Man of the Year, which really I don't think a lot of people would have predicted that before the season," Lowe continued.
"Oh of course not," Herring agreed. "I've always thought and kind of wondered, for teams like this... I feel like most championship teams, part of what forges them and really catapults them to that, is when they have someone out, someone steps up and becomes way more important than you thought they could be. And they keep those skills, they kind of hone those skills while someone is out, get used to taking on more responsibility so that they're a better player when those people come back, and I just think that that was potentially huge for them."
Reaves has an outside shot at the award, but his modest cumulative scoring and the team's current sub-.500 record, which it might continue to hold, may make him an also-ran.
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