Austin Reaves is glad to be playing for the Los Angeles Lakers again despite the loss

Austin Reaves is glad to be playing for the Los Angeles Lakers again despite the loss originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . Austin Reaves had a superb 2025-26 season for the Los Angeles Lakers despite missing a lot of time with injuries.

The postseason was not safe from those injury issues because he did not play the first four games of the first-round series against the Houston Rockets . Now, he is finally back after a long layoff due to an oblique injury. He played 34 minutes in his first game back, scoring 22 points.

However, he mostly thrived from the free-throw line, shooting 12-for-13, but struggled from the field with his 4-for-16 splits. Austin Reaves wants to bounce back after his underwhelming Lakers return The Lakers did a wonderful job filling in for both Reaves and Luka Doncic in this series. However, the past two games have been tough to stomach because they could have been in the second round by now with a date set up against the San Antonio Spurs .

That is not the case because the Rockets are hanging around with two consecutive wins. They are also doing it without Kevin Durant, so injuries to the Lakers' stars are valid excuses anymore. Reaves, in particular, knows this because he was struggling mightily in Game 5.