With LeBron James sidelined for multiple weeks because of a groin injury, the onus to keep the Lakers afloat automatically fell on Luka Doncic. But, as per veteran insider Dave McMenamin, “Luka’s not looking at it like ‘I need to be the guy to take care of everything through this.’ He feels like everybody will be involved in picking up the pieces while LeBron is out.” However, the LA team failed to achieve that goal tonight as they suffered a brutal loss against the Nets. Surprisingly, Austin Reaves took the blame for the unfortunate outcome.

Reaves struggled to find his rhythm tonight, finishing with only 17 points on an abysmal three of fourteen shooting. Disappointed by his performance, AR said post-game, “Yeah, I just thought I played incredibly bad. Yeah, it’s really, you know, as much as I can say about that. Just, you know, it’s frustrating not helping your team win, and you know when Bron’s out, I gotta be better, and I wasn’t. You know, that’s one of the reasons we lost.”

Knowingly or unknowingly, Reaves has gradually become the Lakers’ third star behind LeBron and Luka. He’s averaging 18.8 points and nearly six assists, showcasing his team’s faith in him. However, he failed to step up his game tonight in LBJ’s absence. Sure, he scored 17 points and dished out ten assists, but his lack of efficiency cost the LA team.

Even Doncic faced a similar issue. While he finished with a 22-point triple-double, the Slovenian Sensation went 8 of 26 from the field, and it’s hard to win games when your two best players are shooting this inefficiently. Luka Magic tends to get inconsistent in his initial days as a Laker. Therefore, fans hope it’s just a one-off game and not a regular occurrence.

Moreover, the Lakers needed a big-time performance from Reaves and Luka, as they were playing without multiple stars, including Jaxson Hayes, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Rui Hachimura. But they failed to deliver. Unfortunately, that was not the only issue the LA team faced!

Austin Reaves reveals True Feelings about NBA Referees’ bias during Lakers vs Nets

Amid his terrible shooting night, most of Reaves’ points tonight came from free throws. He went to the charity stripes 11 times and made ten of those shots. But AR was the only Lakers star to get so many foul calls, as the closest after him was Luka, who went to the line only four times. In total, the Lakers attempted only 19 free throws all game. Meanwhile, the Nets got 30 attempts.

Sure enough, this potential bias from the refs led to frustration for Reaves, as he addressed the issue post-game: “I mean, it is frustrating when you think you’re getting fouled and you’re not getting to the free throw line. You know they got to the free-throw line I think 12 more times than we did…” 

In the 30 attempts they received, the Nets knocked down 19 of them with a free-throw percentage of 63.3. On the other hand, the Lakers had 19 and bucketed 15 free throws. Sure, they had better efficiency in getting free throws. However, if you had watched the game live, there were some contentious calls.

“I mean, not getting calls that you think you should get is frustrating, and just not making shots is frustrating, and you gotta be able to flip the page from that and you know lock into something else to help the team,” concluded Reaves.

However, he also acknowledged that not getting the desired foul calls was only part of the problem and the Lakers did not play up to the mark, “I mean there’s a million different things that we should have did better to you know win that game and you know unfortunately, we didn’t do any of them.”

Hopefully, they will bounce back in the next game. It’s against the Bucks on Thursday, and we will get a much better showing from Reaves. LeBron’s still being missed at 40!