Lakers News: The Ringer Criticizes LA’s Reliance On Austin Reaves

Entering this season, an underrated aspect of your Los Lakers' offseason was their commitment to Austin Reaves as their third scoring option.

Coming off of a terrific postseason in which he averaged 16.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 4.6 assists on .464/.443/.895 shooting splits, the Arkansas product was invited to play for Team USA, where he "really impressed observers."

Between his great playoff work and what seemed to be further significant improvement with the national team, the confidence in Reaves had reached an all-time high.

I, for one, have repeatedly mentioned him averaging north of 20 points per game as an "X-factor" for this team's championship hopes, as in order to get enough scoring output, along with easing the load off of an aging LeBron James and injury-prone/aging Anthony Davis, he'd need to keep up the pace.

Unfortunately, 10 games in, Reaves hasn't looked as great as we hoped for. Instead, he's averaging under 14 points per game, on a mere 44% from the field and 32% from 3. In fact, after the 8th game of the season, Reaves was benched.

Now, to that end, those numbers are on the upswing, and his incredibly slow start is going to skew those numbers significantly.

Since being relegated to a sixth man role on Friday, Reaves has put up games of 18 and 15 points, on a combined 52% shooting from the field and 50% from the 3-point line on 8 combined attempts.

In spite of this development, analysts at The Ringer are critical of LA's reliance on Reaves. Even if he can continue this uptick in production, is his overall output on par with other third scoring options across the league (Michael Porter Jr., Bradley Beal, Kristaps Porzingis, Tobias Harris, etc.)?

In the most recent episode of The Ringer NBA Show podcast, titled "NBA Panic Meter," Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre voice their skepticism of Reaves' production being "enough," for a couple of reasons.

First, the Lakers don't exactly have a second shot creator ahead of Reaves. While Austin's counting stats might be good enough to be a solid third option, when it comes to half-court offense, for as good as Anthony Davis is, it's hard to get him the ball in ways to get easy offense.

He's not a particularly good shooter from anywhere on the floor, and at this stage of his career, he's not able to score off the dribble nearly as well as he used to.

To get the ball in the post or to him in the form of a lob/entry pass, you'd need to get into the flow of a more complex action or play that often involves multiple ball-handlers and a lot of movement.

For this reason, it's no surprise that 65% of AD's made field goals are assisted, contrary to Denver's Jamal Murray for example, who is assisted on just 38% of his made field goals.

As a result, outside of LeBron, the onus falls on Austin Reaves to create shots at a high level and volume, which, per The Ringer's analysts, is a lofty expectation to place on a player who doesn't have the same creation skills as most other secondary creators (e.g. Murray, Damian Lillard, Jaylen Brown, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Paul George).

This also ties into their second reason, which is that Reaves is not a pure, or volume scorer. Instead, he's a change of pace guy. Their exact phrasing was that he "takes advantage" of "certain" "coverages," "matchups," and "situations," suggesting that as opposed to being a 3-level scorer at all times, he's someone that is called upon to take over, or take advantage in a specific situation.

I consider The Ringer's analysis here to be quite good, as simply put, for as many things as Reaves is able to do, he's not the type of player that many of the guys I listed above are. He's indubitably a tier (or two) below all of them, and thus, levying an expectation onto him to create shots at an exceptionally high level is unfair.

This has, and will continue to cause issues for the Lakers. The offense has a propensity to stagnate for minutes at a time, and a big reason for that is their lack of shot creation beyond LeBron. AD's best asset at this stage of his career is defense, and with the inconsistency that guys like D'Angelo Russell and Gabe Vincent bring to the table, all eyes are on Reaves in a lot of situations.

It's possible his newfound bench role ends up being a way to optimize his "change-of-pace" kind of role, but at the end of the day, coming off of the bench carries meaning until you enter the game. At that point, rotations become muddy and starters and bench players are mixed up constantly until the final buzzer.

To that end, whether he comes off the bench or not, any combination the Lakers put around Reaves, AD, and LeBron – a trio that is virtually guaranteed to close every game – will lead to equal responsibility placed on Reaves.

That responsibility is one he may not be able to handle, which is what led me to say something similar to The Ringer last week, encouraging LA to make a trade for another creator.

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