Can Austin Reaves Make Another Jump and Bring the Lakers With Him?
The Los Angeles Lakers have title aspirations, and Austin Reaves holds the key to their upside
The dirty secret about the past four decades of NBA history is it’s all about value. Rarely, superstars alone win you a championship. Since the introduction of the salary cap in 1984-85, the key to almost every NBA champion has been a value contract. Sometimes, that’s the best player on the team performing at superhuman levels, but many times, an under-compensated star makes the sum of contracts add up to far more. If you’re looking to find the next NBA champion, don’t go counting stars– look for the best contract.
Unsurprisingly, the Los Angeles Lakers offseason has earned more praise than it likely deserves. For a team that got swept in the Western Conference Finals and is heavily reliant on a soon to be 39 year old LeBron James, their offseason boiled down to keeping the band together, replacing Dennis Schroeder for Gabe Vincent, and adding Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood to their center rotation. I don’t hate those moves, but those transactions don’t move the needle significantly. When it’s winning time, it’s the same team that came up short.
While I don’t think the Lakers did anything to definitively vault above the competition, they made one move that looks to have real championship upside. Their extension of Austin Reaves at 4-years, $53.8 million, was one of the best moves of the offseason. He’s in his prime, highly productive, is now on one of the best contracts in the league, and it may be the move that makes good on their championship aspirations.
Is Reaves as good as LeBron James or Anthony Davis? Not a chance, but he has the added advantage of being severely under-compensated. LeBron is set to make $53 million, Davis $40 million, but Reaves comes in at a paltry $12 million, or as much as Kelly Olynyk for god’s sake, and Lakers head coach Darvin Ham believes he has far more to offer than the journeyman center. (To be fair, Olynyk is a good player and a proven playoff assassin)
During an appearance on the podcast #thisleague UNCUT, Ham made no mistake about his confidence in Reaves and the Lakers, “I’m putting it on record right now, Austin Reaves will be an All-Star at some point soon,” he said. Adding, “I think there’s a lot more levels [he's] going to get to before it’s all said and done.” Ham finished his praise of Reaves, saying, “He’ll be an All-Star and a world champion, with me in the room with him.”
Confidence levels are always raging in the off-season, but there’s some truth in Darvin hamming it up. If the Lakers, as currently constructed, are going to be NBA champions, they need Austin Reaves to take another leap and be the star contract that separates them in a crowded Western Conference.
From Undrafted to Efficiency Monster
The growth Reaves has made in his first two seasons has been monumental. With only a 5.6-minute bump in per-game playing time, Reaves increased his scoring from 7.3 points per game to 13.0 while improving his efficiency on 2-pointers, 3-pointers, and free throws. He paired his increased scoring responsibility with improved passing, going from 1.8 assists per game to 3.4. Reaves pulled off the rare feat of increasing his volume and efficiency and, along the way, became instrumental in their run to the Western Conference Finals. Not bad for a four-year college guy who went undrafted.
The key to Reaves’ success has been his ungodly efficiency as a scorer. His true shooting percentage (TS%) of 68.7% is truly bonkers. It was the fourth-best TS% in the league behind only Nikola Jokic (the patron saint of efficiency), Nic Claxton, and Mason Plumlee. Anytime a guard is in the same shooting efficiency neighborhood as centers, you know they’re doing something special.
Basketball-Reference’s Advanced Shooting shows just how impressive Reaves is as a scorer. A rating of 100 is exactly the league average, 101 is 1% better than the league average, 99 is 1% worse, and Austin Reaves was at least 10% better in all of them for efficiency and volume.
No player in the entire league came close to combining Reaves’ efficiency, free-throw generation, and 3-point volume. His raw free throw attempt rate of .541 was the eighth-best figure in the association, and he and Harrison Barnes were the only players with a FTr above .500 and a 3-point attempt rate above .400. It’s incredibly difficult to generate both 3-pointer and free throw attempts, and Reaves manages just that and still retained incredible efficiency.
What makes this all the more impressive is the spots on the floor that Reaves is shooting and how he’s getting there. Nic Claxton and Mason Plumlee generate their efficiency on the backs of their guards as dunk merchants who create almost no offense on their own, and Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world, but Reaves is creating his offense at all three levels largely on his own.
In every single region, Reaves converted his field goal attempts at an above-league-average rate even as he saw the percentage of his assisted field goals decrease. The most difficult skill in the NBA is to generate efficient self-created offense. As a scorer, the only thing separating Reaves from stardom is volume.
How High Can Reaves Push His Usage?
In theory, no player should be as efficient as Reaves was last season. Any player generating points at his level of efficiency should see their opportunities cranked up until their efficiency starts to suffer. The goal isn’t to make a player inefficient; it’s to find the perfect equilibrium of volume and efficiency.
Remember when Stephen Curry was melting our brains by taking eight 3-pointers a game and then blew up 80 years of basketball convention when he took 11 threes per game en route to the first unanimous MVP ever? In Curry’s first six seasons, he hit 44% of his threes, but since then, he has only converted 42.1%. What the Warriors and Curry discovered is that it’s far better to have a player hit 42.1% of their threes on 11 attempts per game, than it is to hit 44% on 6.5.
There’s no doubt that Reaves can shoulder a larger scoring load while maintaining above-league-average shooting efficiency. Over the first 32 games of the 2022-23 season, he averaged 11.2 points per game on a 13.6% usage with an effective field goal percentage (eFG%) of 62.4% and a TS% of 68.8%. In the ensuing 32 games, he saw his scoring grow to 14.9 points per game on a 19.2% usage, but his eFG% only dropped to 61% and his TS% to 68.5%. The question for the Lakers and Reaves is just how high can his usage go before he starts to really suffer?
Over 100 qualified players sported a usage rate above 19.2% in 2022-23. For Reaves to enter All-Star territory, he’ll need to boost that figure to at least 23%. Unfortunately, he only eclipsed a 23% usage in six of his 64 regular season games and three of his 16 playoff contests. And of those six regular season games, he only crossed 30 minutes of court time in two and maxed out at 31:15 minutes of action.
Another worrying sign is that Reaves’ jump in 3-point shooting efficiency from his rookie to sophomore season was so massive that it’s ripe for regression. To go from 31.6% to 39.8% on 3-pointers is fantastic, but with only 383 career 3-point attempts and 216 last season, his true talent 3-point shooting remains a mystery. While it’s likely that Reaves is an above-average 3-point shooter, he’s likely closer to a 37.5% true talent shooter than a burgeoning 40% sniper on increased volume.
However, there are some encouraging indicators that Reaves’ efficiency is well suited to weather a volume increase. The most crucial component of his profile that should allow him to continue to excel with a growing scoring load is his free throw generation and free throw efficiency.
The poster child for the value of elite free throw generation is prime James Harden. From 2017-18 to 2019-20, Harden won the scoring title each season and averaged 33.7 points per game. He led the league in win shares all three seasons and twice led the league in Box Plus-Minus (BPM), offensive BPM, and value over a replacement player (VORP). Harden sported massive usage rates (37.7%) over that period, but his shooting efficiency on twos and threes was far closer to average than you would have guessed. He sported a 2P+ of 104, 102, and 106 over those three seasons and a 3P+ of 101, 104, and 99 for an eFG+ of 104, 103, and 103. What made his slightly better-than-league-average scoring efficiency defense shattering was his ability to generate points at the line. He posted FTAr+ of 199, 174, and 203 with a FT+ of 112, 115, and 112.
The greatest antidote to efficiency decay from increased volume is getting to the free throw line, and Reaves has already proven to be a master foul-baiter. Reaves FTAr+ of 203 last season was right behind Joel Embiid and just above Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Throw in his career free throw shooting being 85.6%, and Reaves can realistically weather a significant drop in 2-point and 3-point efficiency so long as he can continue to generate free throws at an elite rate.
NBA tracking data also suggests that Reaves has a scoring skill set that’s more resistant to increased usage.
Most players experience a significant decay in efficiency with each passing dribble, but Reaves has shown an ability to maintain outstanding efficiency even when he starts to take the air out of the ball. The only caveat is the relative lack of sample size in higher dribble situations, but his eFG% exceeding 62% on 2.9 FGA per game when he dribbled the ball at least three times suggests it is likely a real skill.
The same trend emerges when you look at Reaves’ shooting based on the proximity of his defender and the time spent on the ball.
Once again, the only question is what will more opportunities do to his efficiency? There will be a drop, but the difference between good and great is the speed at which diminishing returns come. Fortunately, Reaves has built up a substantial efficiency cushion, but he has multiple usage thresholds to cross before he’s where the Lakers need him to be.
As a scorer, Reaves is ready for a much larger share of the Lakers’ offense. With LeBron James and D’Angelo Russell likely in the Lakers’ starting five, Reaves probably won’t be asked to handle too much creation for others. Although, his 5.5 assists to 2.5 turnovers per 100 possessions last season indicate that he’s a capable enough playmaker where his passing won’t start to eat into his overall offensive production. The Lakers should push his usage into the mid to low 20s and see what they have. There’s a chance it all falls apart, especially with an increased minutes load, but if he can maintain league-average efficiency from the field with a FTAr around 150, it’ll be worth it.
The Lakers shouldn’t be the favorites in the West. LeBron is a year older, their defense is highly reliant on the paper mache body of Anthony Davis, Gabe Vincent and Rui Hachimura had great playoff runs, but their career stats suggest they’re bench players, and they still lack a true center to play next Davis. However, Austin Reaves taking the next step as a high-usage scorer is their ace in the hole. He hasn’t done it yet, but there’s every indication he can. The Lakers’ upside depends on what he’s able to shoulder, and they need to see just how high it can go. If Reaves can handle it, he’ll be an All-Star, and the Lakers will be a true contender (assuming health). If he can’t, they’ll have to make a massive mid-season swing and be content with an excellent fourth banana. Still, not bad for an undrafted four-year college guy.