Austin Reaves and the Los Angeles Lakers are now in a position where no team has ever come back from in the league’s history, as they are now down 0-3 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in their Western semifinals series. They lost to the defending champions 108-131 in Game 3 at home in Los Angeles last night.
Following the game, the 27-year-old guard addressed the media on the Lakers’ mindset while trying to climb back and achieve a nearly impossible task of coming back from this position to win four games in a row.
“Just come and compete. There are a bunch of guys in the locker room who are competitors. Basically, the message after the game was just we’re gonna come here Monday, and we’re gonna get a win.”
“Obviously, this situation sucks, but that doesn’t give us the license to quit. We gotta come in here and compete. We owe the organization that, we owe each other that, we owe our fans that. So we’re gonna come here Monday and play as hard as we can,” Reaves concluded.
Earlier in his postgame media scrum, Reaves also addressed the team’s struggles to capitalize on a good start in the first half and taking that momentum into the second half.
“I think we played really well in the first half, even a little bit in the third quarter. It’s kind of been the trend the last couple of games. Just got to figure out how to take that first half and move it to the second,” said Reaves.
In Games 2 and 3 of this series, the Lakers have led the game in the first half but given up the lead in the third quarter to a point of no return. A reporter also pointed out that the Thunder have outscored the Lakers by 31 points in the third quarters combined for all three games in this series.
“If I had the answers, we would not struggle with it,” said Reaves on the Thunder’s ability to blitz and capitalize on the third quarter.
Reaves has been struggling on both ends of the floor as he failed to find his rhythm on offense tonight and was apparently being targeted by the Thunder’s offense while he was the primary defender.
He finished tonight with 17 points, nine assists, and three rebounds while shooting 5-13 from the floor (38.5 FG%) and 1-5 from beyond the arc (20.0 3P%). 12 of his points came in the first half, and he had five turnovers, three of which came in the third quarter.
Clearly, Reaves has not been his 100% self since recovering from injury. But that’s not a valid excuse for his struggles on the court, and he realizes that and vows to compete harder in the next game with their season on the line.
The Lakers will need Reaves to be more aggressive for any hopes of pulling off a miracle to yield fruit. Otherwise, we might be seeing LeBron James for the last time in a Lakers jersey going into Game 4.
