Lakers’ Austin Reaves shows knack for efficient scoring

PHILADELPHIA — Three-point game, 11 seconds left. With LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook all on the court, who gets a crack at the tying basket?

Faced with this scenario Friday night, the Lakers went with a fourth option. James was the inbounder in an action designed for Austin Reaves. And while the 24-year-old has hit big shots before, what happened in the tight game against Philadelphia was perhaps even more telling: He got fouled from behind the line by Tobias Harris, who grimaced as the whistle sounded – fooled again.

Later, Reaves (who scored 25 points) would kick himself for making only the first two at the foul line in what would eventually play out as an overtime loss: “If I don’t make ’em, my mom will call me or my dad will call me, or slap me, because they’re free,” Reaves told Southern California News Group recently.

But over the first quarter of the season, the Lakers have come to rely on a somewhat surprising revelation: If you give Reaves, who averages just 10.9 points per game, the ball on offense, something good is likely to happen. No one would confuse the skinny second-year guard with an All-Star, but he has quietly become one of the most efficient scorers in the NBA.

“He has all of my faith and the faith of our coaching staff,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said, “in the sense whenever he’s in the game and has the ball in his hands, he’s going to make the right play on both sides of the ball.”

What might serve him best is a sort of old-school, footwork game that is as unpredictable as it is crafty. He’s got ball fakes, like the one that caught Detroit’s Jalen Duren leaping last month as Reaves dove in for an up-and-under. His head fake along the baseline has been a go-to move, like when he fooled Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and drove past a Defensive Player of the Year candidate for a shot off the glass. He’s found ways to jerk his head or his legs in his shooting motion when he senses a defender nearby – getting him to the line in critical moments like the end of the game with the Sixers.

He’s a borrower: Reaves admits he’s pulled the ball fakes in part from former teammate Rajon Rondo and tried to draw fouls like James Harden. His head fake from the corner shoots a throwback to former Hawks star Steve Smith’s “Smitty” move. He was a fan of Manu Ginobili – some of the advanced footwork is reminiscent of the Spurs legend. After a long pause at a recent press conference, Ham compared Reaves to longtime Phoenix swingman Dan Marjele because, “he could do a little bit of everything.”

Reaves jokes that he has no choice but to get in his bag because he’s not as athletic as the competition: “I wish I could go dunk everything, but I can’t.” But teammates notice his dedication to the craft.

“He’s playing unbelievable for us,” Davis said recently. “He’s constantly asking questions to all the older guys, and he definitely wants to get better. He’s watching film, owning up to his mistakes.”

Reaves drew attention earlier this season when he was enjoying a fabled 50-40-90 shooting line (FG%, 3FG%, and FT%). His 3-point percentage has taken a dip in the game since, but he’s still shooting 51.5% from the floor, 37.2% from three and 90.8% from the line through 25 games. As of Saturday afternoon, Reaves was the only player shooting those averages or better while also playing at least 500 minutes (the Clippers’ Luke Kennard has put up high shooting numbers, but has played less than 400 minutes this season).

If that seems surprising for a player who was shooting 46-32-84 last season, well, yeah. Even as a college player, Reaves never quite put together as impressive a shooting season as this. Reaves acknowledged a slight change in the emphasis of his form … but there’s no other real secret to it, he said.

“Just a little bit of an emphasis was really getting my follow-through ‘through-through,’” he told SCNG. “Instead of kind of pushing it, really snapping the wrist and holding it, staying in shots was the focus. But really at the end of the day, it was just being in the gym every single day, a couple times a day repping it out.”

Stat site Cleaning the Glass puts Reaves at the head of some fascinating metrics. Golden State’s Stephen Curry, for example, averages 1.38 points per shot attempt, one of the best marks for a guard. Admittedly on a much lower usage – Reaves attempts 6.8 shots to Curry’s 20.3 – Reaves is right behind him at 1.37 PSA.

There is also no rotation guard in the NBA who draws fouls on a higher percentage of his shooting attempts than Reaves, who gets to the line one in every five shots – a number on par with forwards like Orlando’s Paolo Banchero or Miami’s Jimmy Butler rather than a guard playing up as a wing. It also helps that Reaves is fourth in charges drawn this season with nine through 25 games.

Most compelling just might be his influence on the team offense. Davis, one of the best scorers in the NBA in the past month, and Westbrook, a pace-driven assist machine, have the best on-off court differential in offensive rating (plus-9.0 and plus-8.0 respectively). But Reaves is right behind them with a plus-5.4 differential: While he’s not the engine of the attack while on the court, he’s arguably the Lakers’ best complementary piece on that end.

Even the Arkansas native didn’t know some of his most flattering efficiency metrics until a recent interview, but it squares with how he tries to play the game: He’s always looking for an easier shot.

“I don’t feel like I have to get into the paint and force stuff,” he said. “I can get to the paint, use shot fakes, get to the free-throw line, make plays. Never want to be one-dimensional, so the shots I take in the paint are really good. They’re never really super tough shots.”

And with Reaves taking them, the Lakers can have an unusually high confidence that points, one way or another, will follow.