Oklahoma City coach Billy Donovan speaks with Nerlens Noel, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chris Paul during a timeout in an NBA basketball game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the New Orleans Pelicans at Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. Oklahoma City won 115-104. [Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman]
Speaking about the difficulty of playing back-to-back against Thunder while shorthanded, Austin Reaves.
The Los Angeles Lakers finished 2-2 after an extremely uneven four-game road trip that included two crushing losses to playoff contenders, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Philadelphia 76ers. Austin Reaves, a guard for the Lakers who finished Thursday night’s loss to the Thunder with a game-low minus-23, talked about the season as a whole.
The Lakers have occasionally had runs where it seems like they’ve solved their problems. Additionally, there have been times when it appears as though they are a great distance from their desired location. On Thursday, following one of those nights, Reaves and other Lakers were asked to assess the team’s current state.
Even though Reaves feels the Lakers have no justification for such a subpar performance, he thinks the Thunder’s victory was mostly accidental, via Spectrum SportsNet:
Any consecutive is difficult. especially when you’re facing a youthful, gifted team like OKC, who had a great night’s shooting. They approach the game correctly. They have good coaching. They also compete with each other. It’s going to be difficult for you to scramble more than usual and make multiple defensive effort. That isn’t an excuse, though. We must improve.
Reaves echoed a widely held opinion regarding the Lakers’ recent spate of injuries. The Lakers guard was generally optimistic but refrained from drawing any firm conclusions about the team until they were playing at full strength.
“Given that we’ve had so many injuries, players out, and players who haven’t played, I’m not sure if you could really do that at this point. We’ve kind of adopted a “next man up” mentality, which is something I think we’re good at, but it’s difficult when important players aren’t there. We all have areas we need to improve upon and things we do well, so I think we’re in a good place overall. Here is where we like to be.
Before making any decisions, the Lakers would definitely prefer to have players like Gabe Vincent and Jarred Vanderbilt back. A quarter of the way through the season, the Lakers still have an above.500 record despite all the missed time. Reaves is concentrating on these advantages rather than the drawbacks of a blowout defeat.
Another player on the roster who wished to exercise patience in evaluating the team’s early play was Anthony Davis of the Lakers.
Not at all. since we haven’t been well. I believe that while we are winning games that we ought to win and managing to stay afloat, we are also losing games that we ought to win. However, after 20 games, I believe we could have performed better. There were games that we could have won. But everything is well with us. Particularly with some of our best guys when we’re not entirely healthy. Thus, we think we’re in a good place.
