Last season, Austin Reaves had a breakout campaign for the Los Angeles Lakers. He emerged as a star, and he was a major reason they went all the way to the Western Conference finals.
That unexpected success led to high expectations for this season, especially after Reaves was rewarded this past summer with a new four-year, $54 million contract. However, the team is just 17-17, and head coach Darvin Ham has experimented with multiple starting lineups.
In early November, he moved Reaves from the starting lineup to the bench. For a while, it seemed to work. While Reaves admitted he didn’t love the reassignment, he accepted it. The undrafted guard played very well in December, but his 28.7 average minutes a game during that month seemed too low for him.
According to Anthony Irwin, there are problems between the two, and those problems may have something to do with Reaves playing fewer minutes than he perhaps should be logging.
— Lobos (@16and0) December 30, 2023
“This possible thing between (Reaves) and Ham is … something. I’m here to tell you, I’ve heard it very clearly, that for whatever reason, Ham doesn’t mess with Austin the way that you would think he would. This might escalate all the way to where an agent gets involved or the front office gets involved and people start asking what is going into these decisions?”
Many Lakers fans have wanted Ham fired for a while this season, and his apparent decision to limit Reaves’ playing time certainly hasn’t helped the coach’s reputation.
Amid multiple trade rumors going back to the summer of 2022, the team has reportedly been very reluctant to include Reaves in any trade offers.
