{"id":908999,"date":"2026-09-28T21:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908999\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T21:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T21:14:11","slug":"austin-reaves-happy-to-be-back-with-lakers-after-weird-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/908999\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Reaves \u2018happy to be back\u2019 with Lakers after \u2018weird\u2019 free agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

After being massively underpaid for the first five seasons of his NBA career, Austin Reaves signed a four-year, $184 million deal this summer to stay with the Los Angeles Lakers for the foreseeable future. His 2025-26 salary ($41.2 million) rightfully ranks him among the league\u2019s 40 highest-paid players as the 28-year-old presumably enters his prime and should vie for All-Star appearances out West<\/a> over the next few seasons.<\/p>\n

During Monday\u2019s media day, Reaves described those contract negotiations as \u201cweird\u201d because he didn\u2019t want to be anywhere else and told reporters he mostly took a hands-off approach by letting his agents handle things.<\/p>\n

\u201dIt\u2019s weird, to be honest with you. I\u2019m glad that\u2019s behind us and we got that over with. It\u2019s difficult because I\u2019ve been here for five years, this is going on my sixth year,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cThis is home to me. I want to be here. Both parties wanted that to happen. It was just how can we figure out what\u2019s best for our team, figure out what\u2019s best for me at the same time. We had a good time doing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t talk much. My agents took care of all that. Stay out of the way and then when we get a number we like, we take. Like I said, my heart was always here. I didn\u2019t want to go anywhere else. I\u2019m just happy to be back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaves clearly loves being a Laker and is ecstatic to be around for the long haul as the only franchise he\u2019s ever known embarks on a new era with him and Luka Don\u010di\u0107 leading the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After being massively underpaid for the first five seasons of his NBA career, Austin Reaves signed a four-year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,38926,590,85],"class_list":["post-908999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-lakers-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908999","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=908999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}