Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - The Silver Lining for the Lakers and Austin Reaves After Game 5

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Game 5 was not a good one for the Lakers, especially offensively.  And while Austin Reaves did score 22 points, most of it came from the free throw line. His ineffectiveness from the field (4-16 shooting) was a drag on the performance of the offense as a while. It's easy to understand why - parachuting into a series after a long layoff isn't easy - but the circumstances don't necessarily matter. The Lakers need Reaves to be better going forward.  The good news is while the output for A.R. and the team wasn't terribly impressive, there were very positive signs about what Reaves can do for the Lakers in Game 6 and (if needed) Game 7. The Lakers found themselves in the paint more. They got to the line more. Reaves was far more capable of creating his own shot against Houston's defense, finding ways to penetrate and create opportunities for others as well.  Meanwhile, he didn't hurt them on the other end.  So the foundation is there. The importance of his skill set is clear. But he, and the Lakers, need more shots to go down.  ? Can he do it?   HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky    Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! 5-Hour ENERGY Get candy-flavored chaos with Fruity Rainbow 5-hour ENERGY®️ Shots - available online at https://5hourENERGY.com or Amazon   KALSHI For a limited time, download the Kalshi app and use code LOCKEDON to get ten dollars when you trade ten. Kalshi. Trade on anything.   DoorDashFrom tipoff to overtime, stay in your bag and order on DoorDash.Get snacks, drinks, gear — whatever gets you through the season — delivered right to your door.DoorDash. In your bag all season long.   Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast Gametime Today's episode is brought to you by Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first purchase. Terms and conditions apply. FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel.Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get two-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins.Visit https://FANDUEL.COMto get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Austin Reeves was four of 16 from the floor in game five, but we'll tell you where the upside lies for game six. You are locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for stopping by Locked on Lakers, Brian Komenetsky, Andy Komenesky. We broke down in the indeed, just horrible detail,

the disappointing loss of game five. On Wednesday night, the Lakers, whether they were too flat, whether they were out, played out, hustled, out competenced, out everything, whatever you want to attribute it to. And by the way, you don't have to pick just one. They, it was for a game that everybody expected the Lakers to really come out and pour everything into the, the result was quite disappointing. If there were some bright sides, at least for the duration of the series,

Austin Reeves came back. He was in that game. He had moments of impact, finished with 22 points, played what seems like fairly unrestricted minutes, started the second half. That felt more, or at least potentially more, about Luke Kinnard giving them absolutely nothing for, I don't know, anywhere from six to eight consecutive quarters, then There was a sense of putting our best guys in the lineup. There's no question.

Point being, you at least did it. Oh, no, no. All I'm saying is I have, JJ had said before the game that there was no minutes restrictions. Sometimes that's games and chips. Sometimes it wasn't. What I am saying, though, is that Austin's starting the top of the second half felt much more about Luke Conard than Austin himself.

Well, he finished the first half. And so it was one of these deals where like, he's kind of. I'm playing a fairly heavy minutes anyway. And then like, it was clearly like, all right, we can't screw around with this. But, you know, not having a minute's restriction might also mean we'd love it. We'd love to make sure we don't overdo it in the first game back,

given that there still is a game six and a game seven, potentially in this series. You know, but like, so overall, you know, 22 points in 32 minutes, I believe, was the final tally, 34 minutes for Reeves, doesn't look awful, but obviously the shooting efficiency, Andy 4 of 16 from the floor, not nearly good enough. That includes some key misses down the stretch.

Austin only hit two of eight from three point range. The Lakers desperately need better work from everyone standing behind the arc, another game in Game 5 where they just couldn't shoot. So in that sense, four of 16, that's not great. But I think if you're looking forward, there are some things that you can see from what Austin was able to do, the type of shots he was able to get,

and then legitimately doing a lot of damage at the free throw line, that I think you could look at and say, overall are going to be encouraging and beneficial for the Lakers. If you want to kind of be optimistic, heading into Friday's game six. Yeah, to begin, and this is connected to both the free throws and some of the sets that they were able to run, they just get more of a downhill threat.

And that downhill threat was important, whether you're talking about screen and roll action, he had some really good sequences with D'Andre Aiton. He had a few with LeBron. You could see that the timing was off twice in lob attempts that Austin had with LeBron, just they were not in sync for reasons that were, you know, unfortunate and the literal and figurative timing on this was not great, but it is kind of predictable. I did think, though, and we've talked about all season, that Austin and DeAndre have pretty good

chemistry together. That piece of it I actually thought looked pretty good. Austin was able to draw fouls a lot in this game. to be totally honest. Yeah. And I had hoped particularly once Tar Heeson was out, and I thought actually LeBron for a bit of the third quarter, seemed to specifically relish and capitalize on Eason picking up his fourth foul. And we talked about this with Jackson Hayes, or excuse me, with Jackson Gatlin,

that Eason's been the best defender on LeBron, arguably in this whole series. So having him out, I thought they did a good job initially capitalizing on it. They clearly did not do enough since they scored 93 points. But you can see just a different element that Austin brings, particularly as somebody trying to get into the teeth of the defense that isn't quite as wild and unpredictable, less by design than Marcus Smart. Austin can be wild and unpredictable. But when he's on, there's more of a method to the madness and the chaos than with Marcus

smart, than it often just feels like. Every once in a while AR does something, you're like, what the hell was that? Of course. But the ratio of, I'm sorry, what was that? Or what choice did you just make there to Marcus? It's definitely a different way. I'll put it this way. Both can be chaotic.

And I may be wrong about this. it often feels like Austin is highly intentional and aware of what he's doing, even if it isn't a good idea, as opposed to Marcus, who sometimes feels like it may be just as spontaneous, but he's truly making this up as he goes. Who knows? I think the effect, you know, again, he put up 16 shots.

Many of them were open. You know, so like his presence is something that the rockets have to honor. Second highest shot total in the game, or excuse me, on the Lakers behind LeBron. Right. And they particularly have to honor it now that they seem to have. This is something I was certainly wrong about. I was really hoping that the presence of Reeves would kind of help loosen up Kinnard a little bit. That didn't turn out to be true.

Luke had a point. In a couple look. I mean, there were a couple where like, this goddamn ball looked like it was in and kind of rimmed out, rattled around. He's not missing by 30 feet. He's missing, and they need him to, missing metaphorically and literally. And they need to solve that problem. But I thought the shot quality for Reeves was pretty good.

Obviously, his ability to get the line for a team that badly needs the capacity to generate easy points is really important. The Lakers held the rockets to 99 points overall, I'm sorry, 44% from the floor. you know, 35% from three point range, which for them is pretty good, but it's not like a crazy insane percentage. Like, so like, you know, Reeves defensively, you know, the Lakers certainly didn't suffer for his presence. They didn't lose that game on the,

on the defensive side of the ball. So like when you look at going into game six with, you know, kind of have, hopefully having your sea legs under you or perhaps a game seven or whatever might be, just saying you ain't wrong I'm just saying we can do the parenthetical if necessary like it says on the schedule game seven if necessary on Sunday

I would love to have Sunday off so would I just saying as a I would love to have the day off and all of that but like I it was encouraging to see what was loosened up a little bit in their off And if Austin was hitting a little bit more efficiently from the floor, I think not only, obviously, his point total goes up and stuff like that, I think you see a ripple effect for that around the roster. Yeah, they need to be generating cleaner, more efficient, more threatening offense.

And when Austin is at his best, and hopefully there is enough time for him to ramp up to if not his best form, you know, a B plus level. Like they really could use at minimum B plus level Austin in game six. We'll see if that's realistic or not. You know, he needs to get his timing back. He needs to get his finishing back. He needs to be able to hit these outside shots. Like they need somebody to be opening up.

They need somebody to be opening up the floor. And right now, Conard is not hitting shots. I mean, he will be respected, but he's not hitting shots. Ruy's actually hitting from distance, but he only gets so many of these to begin with. Marcus Smart, his overall three-point percentage for the series, and in this game, was fine, but he's going to be given those shots. So Austin hitting, Austin will get, he will get attention regardless. You want to get both attention and production.

Let's talk next about what, what's kind of missing. Like Austin is a catalyst to get some of this stuff going. But like we, we had set a couple bars for how the Lakers are going to win games, how they were going to win four times if it was going to happen. And obviously they've won three. They need one more.

So what's missing? We'll get to it next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Kalshi. The playoffs are here. The most electric time in basketball on Kalshi. You can trade every single playoff game, every series, the conference finals, and the championship.

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eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risks. May not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values, available markets may differ from those mentioned for more information. See calshy.com slash regulatory. All right. So obviously look, the, the Reeves Reve's efficiency from the floor was not nearly good enough. He can take 16 shots.

I realize he ended up 22 points on 16 shots which isn't the most catastrophic thing you'll ever see but it's not great and that's just too many shots that don't go in. I mean there's no like sugar coating it

or whatever needs to be better from that side. Let's assume it, it does get better. I think where the lake have fallen short. We talked about it before the series. They're going to need four games. They're going to win four times. Either LeBron has to go like nuclear nuclear and just do stuff that is, you know, wildly unprecedented for a player of his experience. He was pretty close to that in game two and three, especially. But they for the most part, we're going to need three, four, five guys. to kind of play at or above what you would consider to be like a plus game. And in game five, I think LeBron was kind of right at that line. It would be like, is that a good LeBron game about?

I think he was on the good side, but not way beyond it. You also had DeAndre Ate. That was it. Yeah. So they needed one of these last two games. They need LeBron to do LeBron stuff beyond the top side. of the LeBron bar, which he has been on in four of the five games, in my opinion, outside of game four where he didn't do a whole lot.

But, you know, we understand why. But Reeves has to be above it. Aiton's got to keep doing it. The rotation keeps getting shorter and shorter. So it's like it's not like you're going to go and get like a magical Jackson Hayes game where he puts up 18 and, you know, six or Jake LaRavio. Well, I mean, I will say this. not agrees.

Well, what I was going to say is if those guys produce, the rotation won't get as short because JJ will be looking to play them. Sure. And I was going to get to that in a second. But like you need smart to do some, you know, smart and or can Arden need to be something like they were in games one and two. You could probably get away with one of them being a little bit lesser because Reeves is back. And then it's like you're not going to get 20. know a surprise 18 points from la ravia because i can play enough minutes but what if you got a surprising six what if jackson hayes in a little bit more time gave you know five or six or seven like one of the

the defining differences hayes had zero no points in 10 minutes la ravia had a bucket in nine minutes is nice play finishing inside uh and vando had two points in six minutes the Rockets didn't put up huge numbers off the bench, but in 11 minutes, Dorian Finney Smith had a pair of threes. Aaron Holliday had five points, including a really important floater in the baseline on the fourth quarter. Akogi played 18 minutes, so a little bit more than that. He had seven points.

So like, those aren't standout numbers. But when you're talking about short minute players, six points, five points, eight points is a big deal. And so like a little bit of that kind of supplement that you don't think about for a team that is struggling to score, that's the difference maybe between, you know, 98 and 104. And in a series like this, 104 might be enough to win you the game. Well, to me, there's an obvious candidate for this because I'm now expecting that for game six, Austin's going to be back in the starting lineup, considering he played 34 minutes in this game.

There's no chance he doesn't start. Right. So that being the case, I also fully expect Luke Kinnard is going to be the guy moved to the bench. Luke should be the guy that provides you some scoring punch and some shooting punch, because particularly the latter, that's why he's in the league in the first place. Like, he becomes automatically the guy that you first earmark for, can we get 12 points off the bench? Like, can we get, can we get the guy? that has the most points of anybody who comes off the bench for either team.

And that now does, I think, very reasonably become Luke Kinnard's job. And whether you think he's going to do it or not is a different story, because he has been decreasingly productive since game two onward. Like, he's incrementally... Houston has solved the Luke Kinnard riddle. Yeah, I would love to see them. run more DHA action with Kinnard, whether it's not happening as much because Houston has sniffed it out better. I think that to me is what the problem is.

It might be. I mean, for what it's worth, it's one of the, according to Synergy, it's one of the worst actions that Houston defends. And the Lakers were doing it well, both with Kinnard and against Houston in general earlier in the series. Maybe they've managed to figure it out as this thing has progressed. but it's something if they can make it happen, I'd like to see more of. And none of this takes us away from the original point that they need Austin to elevate from what he did in game five. But Knard becomes the guy that, no, really, this is your job. And it just needs to happen once.

Like the thing about it is like, you know, it's funny. Like the order in which you win a win playoff games has a significant impact kind of on the psychology of all of it. Like, if you'd have said going into the series, you know, Lakers are going to go to game six up three, two, but not said how you got there. You'd be like, damn, sign me up. And that's exactly where you are.

Like two chances to advance, like one of which is you know is going to be on your home court, you probably would assume, oh, they split, you know, split at home, split on the road in one game five. Like, that's probably what you know. you would guess. It isn't how it happened. And so because they ran the table in the first three, now lost it, you know, it just feels so much different, but they just need one game where folks shoot the ball, you know,

where they get a little bit of that overperformance like they got in games one and two, just one of that down there because they've been significantly worse from a sort of a variance standpoint in games three and four, I'm sorry, four and five, even when you've, you know, kind of take into consideration their limitations and Houston's defense. They've still been just statistically worse than you would expect. You only need one of these things. So Reeves got to be better. I mean, I read the comments. We see, and they are correct. Reeves needs to be better. One of these other guys needs to have a game. And then if everything else is the same, the Lakers, I think, still win the series.

But I mean, I understand why people are nervous. No. I mean, the Lakers have moved in the wrong direction as this series has lengthened. The Rockets have moved in the right direction as this series has lengthened. That means the longer this goes, the more it really does feel like it favors Houston. So the Lakers have got to figure out a way to get this thing put to better. in game six and swinging back to the original point of this conversation, a lot of that will hinge on Austin.

He just has to be better. No question. Lockdown-Lickers on YouTube is we're going to hang out with over 38,000 subscribers to the channel. Do check out the everyday air club. Five bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 50 bucks here, Lockdownlakers.com and get the show ad-free and access to the Discord channels across all of the whole NBA network here at Locked on. So plenty to offer.

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