{"id":250077,"date":"2025-10-30T12:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/250077\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T12:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:38:08","slug":"austin-reaves-oklahoma-highlights-have-nba-fans-baffled-that-lakers-star-went-undrafted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/250077\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Reaves&#8217; Oklahoma highlights have NBA fans baffled that Lakers star went undrafted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Austin Reaves is in the midst of one of the best runs of play in the history of the NBA.<\/p>\n<p>He just hit a game-winner Wednesday for the Los Angeles Lakers, and that wasn&#8217;t even the best night the former Oklahoma Sooners standout has had recently.<\/p>\n<p>These are his stats in the five games to start this season, with Luka Doncic missing the last three and LeBron James missing all five:<\/p>\n<p>26 points, 5 rebounds, 9 assists, 9-16 FG (7-10 FT)25 points, 7 rebounds, 11 assists, 9-15 FG (5-5 FT)51 points, 11 rebounds, 9 assists, 12-22 FG (21-22 FT)41 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 13-22 FG (12-14 FT)28 points, 1 rebound, 16 assists, 9-24 FG (7-7 FT)<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/nba\/minnesota-timberwolves\/news\/timberwolves-anthony-edwards-hilarious-unawareness-who-lakers-no-12\/f0699b6bc236a49016dfa69d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Anthony Edwards has hilarious unawareness of who Lakers&#8217; No. 12 is<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Those would be remarkable numbers for any player in the NBA.<\/p>\n<p>And then basketball fans remember that Reaves went undrafted.<\/p>\n<p>At this point, it feels quite astonishing. Reaves&#8217; Oklahoma highlights have been making the rounds on social media, and they&#8217;re certainly quite impressive:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">NBA front offices really seem to have no idea what they are doing sometimes<\/p>\n<p>How could you watch this, and say we\u2019ll pass in the draft?<\/p>\n<p>Insane<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3CGrgHEoGL\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/3CGrgHEoGL<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheHoopHerald\/status\/1983704275495903466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">October 30, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/nba\/chicago-bulls\/news\/michal-jordan-impassioned-take-load-management-shouldnt-be-needed\/0b3dc23c3bf197a65b7cc2ba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Michael Jordan gives an impassioned take on load management<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Reaves&#8217; college journey was a long one, though. He&#8217;s the kind of lengthy-tenured college player that NBA teams often overlook.<\/p>\n<p>He started his career at Wichita State, and even in his second season, he started only a third of the games and averaged 8.1 points.<\/p>\n<p>He sat out a year after transferring to Oklahoma (remember when players had to do that?).<\/p>\n<p>By the time he took the floor for OU, he had clearly improved tremendously. In 2019-20, he put up 14.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game.<\/p>\n<p>And in his last season with the Sooners, in 2020-21, Reaves averaged 18.3 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game.<\/p>\n<p>His shooting wasn&#8217;t there yet, at just 30.5% from 3, another knock on his NBA potential.<\/p>\n<p>But the story of Reaves is of a guy who never stopped getting better. That&#8217;s been true in the league, too, and it&#8217;s why he&#8217;s on such a historic run despite being a player that had doubters all the way along his journey.<\/p>\n<p>More NBA news:<\/p>\n<p>                        <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin Reaves is in the midst of one of the best runs of play in the history of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-250077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}