Late Friday night in the Lakers locker room following a 124-108 win over New Orleans, Austin Reaves was fielding questions after scoring 30 points for a second straight night, having drilled a Lakers record 15 3-pointers in consecutive games.
Across the locker room, about 20 feet away, rose an ebullient voice.
“Has most improved come out yet?” asked LeBron James. “You deserve it, (expletive)!!!!”
LeBron proceeded to make an unprompted, impassioned case for Reaves as the NBA’s Most Improved Player, even as the ever-humble Reaves did his typical ‘Aw shucks’ routine and walked into the shower.
As the most highly-touted prospect in NBA history, LeBron had massive expectations from the second he entered the league. LeBron went on to put the rise of Reaves quite succinctly: “This (expletive) is cold as (expletive)!!!!”
James is impressed with how Reaves went from undrafted rookie – aka zero expectations – to a vet so steadily improved that he’s now producing a reliable 20, 5 and 5 every night.
Indeed, improving from undrafted to this is truly a rarity in the NBA. In the last 30 years, only two other undrafted players have averaged at least 20 points per game in a season:
Fred VanVleet (20.3) – 2021-22 Raptors
Mike James (20.3) – 2005-06 Raptors
Reaves (20.1) – 2024-25 Lakers
With five regular season games remaining, that 20.1 number will likely rise, as Reaves averaged 23.3 points per game in March, and 30.5 in the two April games in which he’s looked better than ever.
“Everything, he’s doing everything on the court,” said Luka Doncic after the win over New Orleans. “He’s helping the whole team, so I’m just happy he’s here. He’s been doing that since I got here, so I’m happy for him.”
“I like his confidence and his aggressiveness,” added Rui Hachimura. “We need him playing like that. I think he’s playing really free right now, and we love it. I just want him to keep going.”
Hachimura is one of Reaves’s longest-tenured teammates, as Rui was acquired from Washington in January of 2022.
“I’m not going to lie, the first time I got here I didn’t know him,” Hachimura laughed. “I think he was injured, and the first game he was back against Milwaukee*, I was like, ‘Woah … he’s got it.’ Since then, literally, he’s just (improving) every game, every year. It’s fun to play with him.”
*Reaves played all 82 games in 2023-24 and is known to tough things out, but did miss about a month due to a hamstring injury, before returning to score 18 points on 7 of 11 FG’s vs. the Bucks.
It’s not the first time Reaves was underestimated.
Lightly recruited out of small high school in Arkansas – 3A in a state where it goes to 7A – despite winning three state titles, Reaves went to Wichita State, and played just 11.8 minutes as a freshman (4.1 points) and 21.5 as a sophomore (8.1). Then he transferred to Oklahoma after sitting out a season, and assumed a prominent on-ball role, averaging 14.7 points and 3.0 assists with 4.6 boards as a junior, and 18.3 points and 4.6 assists with 5.5 boards as a senior.
“There’s a through line to that whole process starting with our evaluation of him at Oklahoma, and in particular at the combine, and it was really his competitive nature that stood out the most,” said Lakers VP of Basketball Ops Rob Pelinka. “You could just tell, every play mattered to him. And then he brought that in when he came for our draft workout. The way he approached that whole day, that’s the Austin Reaves competitive throughline is that he has that spirit of competition with everything he does. That’s something you bet on. And on draft night, that’s what led us to the (two-way contract) commitment.”
