“Austin Reaves: The Lakers’ Promising Player and His Future with the Team”

It’s the holidays in Los Angeles. LeBron James and his family were no match for Mike Malone’s Nuggets. However, there is no time to ruminate on the failure in the conference final, we must look into the future. Beyond the rumors about the King’s early retirement, other players are still in the dark about their future. Starting with Austin Reaves, whose rating is at its highest at the moment.

Favorite of the Lakers and a fortiori for a few weeks, Austin Reaves however, will see his contract expire after the 2022-23 season. The 24-year-old back has just concluded his second season in the NBA with very promising stats for his first playoffs. In 16 games and in a starting role, he averaged 16.9 points, 4.4 rebounds and 4.6 assists. He has therefore definitively established himself as one of the most solid role players in the group of Darwin Ham. Suffice to say that for a player who only receives a million and a half dollars this year, we are talking about first-class value for money for Los Angeles. However, it turns out that the person concerned will be a free agent this summer and inevitably, the prospects of seeing him try his luck elsewhere exist.

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Austin Reaves feels right at home in LA

But then what does the future hold for Austin Reaves ? Well, being free agents coming out of a non-traditional rookie contract (Reaves was not drafted), the back took on protected player status. In short, the Lakers can match any contract offer signed by the player to keep him. The idea of ​​keeping the American-German is becoming clearer in LA since it is the wish of the player himself: “I want to be here. It’s a bit like being at home. I told someone a few months ago that I actually felt like home. The way the fans support me. It’s definitely a place I want to be, but we’ll see what happens. »

Already at the beginning of April, Reaves said he wanted to stay with the Lakers for many beautiful and long years: “I want to be a Laker. Obviously they gave me my first opportunity. I was a big Lakers fan growing up, a big Kobe fan, so honestly just being able to play for the Lakers organization is special, and I want to be a Laker, so hopefully we can get there, and that I can stay there for my entire career. »

Reaves at the center of a brand new project

The fans of Purple and Gold can therefore blow. Austin Reaves does not a priori intend to set sail. It now remains to be seen what type of contract the general manager will offer him. Rob Pelinka. The latter raised the subject after the elimination of Lakers It front of Nuggets : “I would say clearly that our intention is to keep our core of young players, and I think we’ve seen incredible progression and success from Rui (Hachimura) and Austin (Reaves). We have a lot of great young players and we want to do our best to put the pieces of the puzzle together. » This is clear, it remains to be seen now up to what price the auction will go up.