The Los Angeles Lakers started 2025-26 without LeBron James, but it wasn’t a problem with Austin Reaves stepping up his game. Playing as Luka Doncic’s running mate, Reaves exploded onto the season.<\/p>\n
The numbers have been impressive. Reaves’ scoring is up nearly eight points to 28.1 points per game. He is also averaging a career high in assists, dropping 7.6 per game. And he has already logged a 51-point game, following that up with 41 points the next night. <\/p>\n
Reaves has proved he can be the second option for L.A.\u2014or, at the very least, part of the three-headed monster alongside Doncic and LeBron James.<\/p>\n
A big part of Reaves’ scoring jump has been his finishing at the rim at 71.7<\/a> percent and 59.4 percent on non-restricted area paint shots. Comparing that to last season’s 60.5<\/a> percent at the rim and 43.7 percent on non-restricted area paint shots. That’s the leap!<\/p>\n Reaves is making the All-Star leap, but it might be difficult for him to actually get selected to the event, since Doncic is a definite All-Star, and if James plays enough games, he would likely be an All-Star as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers started 2025-26 without LeBron James, but it wasn’t a problem with Austin Reaves stepping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-305793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}