Lakers' Austin Reaves gets brutally honest about performance vs. Mavericks
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The Los Angeles Lakers came into Tuesday night’s game against the Dallas Mavericks on a bit of a hot streak. JJ Redick’s squad has been inconsistent this season, but it seemed to be finding its best basketball and had climbed into the top six spots in the Western Conference.
Tuesday night seemingly provided the Lakers with another opportunity to keep stacking wins. The Mavericks were missing both Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic due to injury, leaving the Mavericks shorthanded. Dallas had also lost five games in a row coming into this one, but that didn’t stop them from blowing out the Lakers 118-97.
Austin Reaves played poorly on both ends of the floor in this one, and he admitted as such postgame according to Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times.
“I was just really, really bad on both sides of the ball tonight,” Reaves said after the game, per Woike.
Reaves had one of his worst games of the season in all facts of the game in this one. Offensively, the young guard scored just 15 points on 5-for-14 shooting. Defensively, the Mavericks singled out Reaves and attacked him in isolation over and over in this one, particularly in the second half. The Lakers were outscored by 25 points when Reaves was on the floor for the full game.
Lakers have a chance to get hot with upcoming stretch
No game is guaranteed for the Lakers, who have shown that they can both beat and lose to anybody on any given night. Despite that, the upcoming stretch of play offers an opportunity for the team to get hot and gain some separation ion the standings.
Of course, that all is contingent on Tuesday night’s stunning blowout loss being a one-off for a team that had been playing pretty well of late. In the past this season, losses like these have been followed by more frustrating performances, so the Lakers need to change that trend this time around.
If they can land on their feet and start playing some good basketball again, the Lakers have an extended stretch of winnable games coming up. On Thursday, the Lakers will head home to host the Charlotte Hornets before a two-game homestead against the San Antonio Spurs. Following those two, the Miami Heat come to town with all of their current off-court baggage surrounding Jimmy Butler, and then the Brooklyn Nets come to town.
The following week, the Lakers play a “road” game against the Los Angeles Clippers before hosting the Washington Wizards and the Boston Celtics. The Lakers don’t leave Los Angeles until Jan. 25, when they play the Warriors, and they don’t leave the state of California until Jan. 27 when they head to Charlotte.
The combination of the opponents and the comfort of playing at home should allow the Lakers to go on a little bit of a run in the coming weeks. It will take some of their best basketball, but it’s impossible to ignore the opportunity in front of JJ Redick and company.
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