The fourth-year Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard has been playing a lot of golf this offseason, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten where he makes his living.
The 6-foot-5 forward from Wichita is still deeply connected to Laker life, to the point where he retains a real sense of his team’s fiercest rivalry even off the court.
During a match with Garrett Clark of GM GolfReaves slapped fans as he rode a cart along the course. One fan yelled “Go Celtics” at Reaves as he drove by, to which an irritated Reaves responded by first looking back in irritation but remaining silent.
“We have a camera on, I’ll keep it…” Reaves said, stopping before he finished his sentence. He was probably going to indicate an MPAA rating lower than R or NC-17.
The Lakers and Boston Celtics are two halves of the fiercest generational rivalry in NBA history. The two clubs have met in a record 12 NBA Finals, most recently in 2010 when Reaves was just 12 years old.
Last year, the 26-year-old had his best full season as a pro, as the Lakers’ third-best player (starting point guard D’Angelo Russell may have scored more, but he’s a far more destructive defensive sieve and has fallen apart in the playoffs). Playing all 82 games (but starting only 57, as former head coach Darvin Ham somewhat inexplicably continued to change lineups and deprioritize offense), Reaves averaged a career-high 15.9 points, with a .486/.367/.853 batting average, 5.5 assists, 4.3 rebounds and 0.8 swipes per night. To be fair, he became a starter relatively late in the Lakers’ 2022-23 season, but put up slightly more impressive numbers in the 22 games he started last year.
Feelings were particularly high early this summer among the Lakers and their fans, as they watched Boston overtake LA in terms of combined NBA championships. This year, the star-studded Celtics went 16-3 in the playoffs to win their record-tying 18th championship. Previously, they were tied with the Lakers with 17 championships. Los Angeles recently won it all in 2020.
The Lakers, led by NBA stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Reaves, Russell and Rui Hachimura, finished 47-35 and lost to the Denver Nuggets in a five-game first-round playoff series.
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