Austin Reaves took the blame for the struggles of the second unit vs. Warriors

Austin Reaves is never one to duck the blame or shift the focus to something else. When he’s bad, he’ll admit he’s bad. And on Friday, he was bad.

Reaves turned the ball over eight times, shot 9-19 from the field and had a plus-minus of -13, worst among the starters. He was not the sole reason the team blew a 25-point first half lead to the Warriors and lost by double digits, but when you get the superstar contract, you also get the superstar treatment in losses.

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Debating just how much blame he deserved is irrelevant as Reaves was as brutally honest about his game as anyone else would have been.

“I was terrible again. That’s it.”

Harsh, but fair.

When Luka Dončić was on the floor, the Lakers were great, though mostly because of him. When he sat, the Lakers were bad, with Reaves at the center of it.

If you were looking for an excuse, the fact that those non-Luka groups consist of many players who joined the team this offseason is a fair one. Those units are looking for chemistry, but when asked if that’s legitimate rationale for their struggles, Austin wasn’t interested in any excuses.

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“It’s real, but that doesn’t give that second unit an excuse to be pretty terrible,” he said. “And that starts with me. I’ll watch the film and try to be better. But you have to learn on the fly and pick up things quickly. As I said, I have to be better to start that.”

Austin has modeled his career around constant improvement, so there’s little doubt this is just another hurdle he’ll have to climb. Even if he’s run second units without Luka before, they’ve often come flanked by LeBron James. This is a new challenge and teams have him one rung higher on the scouting report now.

The word is out that the way to disrupt Austin is to throw doubles at him on ball screens and try to overwhelm him physically into a turnover. That’s the punch defenses are throwing and now it’s time for Austin to throw a counterpunch.

Hopefully that one isn’t terrible.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/austin-reaves-took-blame-struggles-052646596.html

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Publish date : 2026-11-01 05:26:00

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