Inside a $241M week for Austin Reaves and the Lakers

inside the tour Target Center’s locker room in the Lakers’ wing, downtown Minneapolis Austin Reeves He was presented his second game ball in four nights.

It was late evening on 29 October. Shortly before, with seconds remaining in regulation, he split a Wolves double-team at the top of the key and sank a floater to steal the game for the Lakers.

With ice bags wrapped around both of his knees, and his feet soaked in an ice bath, Reeves looked up from his phone and turned to a teammate. jared vanderbilt To pose a simple, but perhaps illustrative, question.

“What day is it today?” he asked.

No one can blame Reeves for losing his balance. It was a dream week in which he scored a career-high 51 points in a win at Sacramento; Dropped 41 points in LA portland trail blazers next night; And then one-upped himself two days later with a 28-point, 16-assist masterpiece that was capped by a buzzer-beater.

It was the best 96 hours of the 27-year-old shooting guard’s ever-expanding five-year NBA career. And it was a one-man act Lebron James And luka doncic Sidelined due to injuries.

with the lakers high 8-3 The record was largely promoted by Reeves, his star rise placing him in the middle of two major stories:

1: Helping the Lakers win early and often leads James to believe his best chance to win an eventual title is in Los Angeles.

But …

2: Playing so well that the same Lakers team may have to spend nearly a quarter billion dollars to keep him.

Back inside the locker room, Reeves ignored what he estimated were more than 500 unread text messages from people reacting to his feat. Amidst the mix of exhaustion and fans, he asked Vanderbilt the question as he was trying to figure out if he could see the Los Angeles Dodgers in person in the World Series.

It was Wednesday, Vanderbilt told him.

While Reeves and the Lakers were busy defeating the Timberwolves, the Dodgers lost Game 5 at home and fell 3–2 to the Toronto Blue Jays.

The accounts began.

With the final two games of the World Series being moved to Canada and the Lakers having another game in Memphis on Friday, Reeves realized that if the Dodgers could win Game 6 he could make it to Game 7 in Toronto. They’ll just have to fly from Memphis to Toronto, and then come back to LA for Sunday’s game Miami HeatOn your own money.

Then Vanderbilt said the quiet part out loud, outlining how Reeves’ week not only lifted L.A. up in the standings, but also may have padded the impending free agent’s future bank account.

“Not gonna lie, if I had 50 and a game-winner in the same week, I’d be taking a PJ,” Vanderbilt said, using the shorthand name for a private jet, which is used only by people who regularly take private jets.

“Yeah, okay,” Reeves said. “I’m taking Southwest. I’m broke.”

“Not for long,” Vanderbilt replied.

For the amount of intrigue that exists at the intersection of James’ career nearing the end and the Doncic era beginning in Los Angeles, it’s Reaves’ continued ascent that may be the real determining factor of the season.

Just as Reeves proved his worth by his presence, he confirmed it in his absence as well. The Lakers looked indifferent in a 122-102 loss to an underdog atlanta hawks The team was set to begin its current five-game road trip on Saturday when Reaves missed his third consecutive game with a right groin strain.

It’s a value proposition that is being monitored in LA and around the league.

“AR is a stud,” an Eastern Conference front office executive told ESPN. “If I were Brooklyn NetsI will throw all the money on it. They’ve shown that when they get the keys to the engine, they can produce.”

Reaves shares the same championship goals as his All-NBA teammates, but also has personal aspirations of getting paid when he reaches unrestricted free agency this summer.

“At the end of the day, the team’s success will help me,” Reeves told ESPN. ,[If I] Help us, it will help me in the long run when you win.”

On June 23, A day after the NBA Finals ended, Reaves and his agents, Aaron Reilly and Reggie Berry of AMR Agency, joined a videoconference call with Lakers acting governor Jenny Buss, president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka and coach JJ Redick. call tracking sources ESPN.

The purpose of the virtual call was for the Lakers to offer Reaves a four-year, $89 million contract extension.

Once pleasantries have been exchanged and the proposal has been made, Reeves and Redick walked out of the call, sources said, while Reilly, Berry, Buss and Pelinka stayed to discuss Reeves’ future and the direction of the franchise. Sources said that overall the call lasted for about 45 minutes.

The Lakers were just checking one box. He had offered the maximum under the collective bargaining agreement, and Pelinka knew Reeves would reject it. And Reeves and his camp knew and appreciated this practice.

A starting annual salary offer of $19.5 million would have been more than a 2,000% increase from his rookie season, when he made $925,000 after signing with L.A. undrafted. And a 40% increase in his 2025-2026 salary, the third year of a four-year, $54 million deal he signed in 2023.

“We were very proud and appreciative when we got the offer,” Berry told ESPN. “But we knew it wasn’t the time to take it.”

According to ESPN NBA front office insider Bobby Marks, the raise will move Reaves from the 26th-highest-paid shooting guard in the league to the 24th-highest-paid shooting guard.

This summer, according to Marks, Reeves is eligible to sign a five-year, $241 million deal with the Lakers and a four-year, $178.5 million deal elsewhere. The first-year salary of $41.5 million is 25% of the salary cap in 2026-27.

There is a show coming next year. People don’t really know what’s going to happen. Keep putting him in trade rumors for second-string centers. @TheRealReggieB https://t.co/Q6ROei9DNi

– Aaron Reilly (@AMRAgency) 24 May 2025

Sources said Reeves isn’t obsessed with making every possible dollar on his next deal, but he knows there’s a limit based on industry standards.

Two of his contemporaries at shooting guard, the 26-year-old Jordan Poole and 25 years old tyler herroSigned contract extensions through 2022 with his original teams – Golden State and Miami, respectively – that pay him 20% of the cap.

With the league’s growth since then, fueled by a new, billion-dollar television rights deal, players making up 20% of the cap in 2026–27 will be paid approximately $33 million.

“I try not to think about it. Honestly, I’ve said it a million times. I want to live in L.A., I love it,” Reeves told ESPN. “Even if the other extension was rejected, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to get a big number that doesn’t mean anything. I want to be here, I want to win. I want to do everything I can to help make this organization better. So I try not to think about those things.”

redick spent Summers is encouraging Reeves to want more.

“The biggest thing was him taking a step forward as a leader and recognizing that this is as much his team as it is LeBron’s team or Luka’s team,” Redick told ESPN. “And recognizing that he has innate, natural leadership skills and he’s able to use them consistently. I told him, he has no excuses. You’re no longer that young player who was a young player. You’re one of those [main] Guys now, and he’s been very responsive to it.”

That message was repeated again and again: at the practice facility, on the golf course, through messages and late-night calls.

“He basically pulled me in and said, ‘Obviously it’s not all on you, but take control. Be a leader,'” Reeves told ESPN. “The same thing over and over again was, ‘Your teammates like you,’ which I don’t even know if they really do or not, but he just kept saying that to me. … ‘You were kind of hiding, now it’s over. You have to take control and speak up and be the leader of this team.'”

While James has been sidelined with sciatica, keeping him in L.A. for rehab during the team’s early-season road trips, and Doncic has missed four of the first 11 games because of a sprained finger on his left hand and a bruised lower left leg, the team has responded to Reaves’ play and personality.

“He’s a little sarcastic that everyone loves,” the Lakers center said. jackson hayes told ESPN. “But you can tell he really cares about everyone on the team.”

For his part, Doncic has taken notice, which is an important step for the Lakers’ future. Because for all the talk about what the Lakers’ future might look like with Doncic, the franchise is looking for long-term pieces with him.

And while Reeves learned years ago how to get along with James, he has quickly developed a communication style with Doncic that is all his own.

Their friendship, or “bromance,” as multiple team sources told ESPN, runs on a steady stream of teasing and locker room humor.

When Reeves told ESPN he thought Doncic could average 40 points this season, Luka smiled and said, “Austin’s an idiot.”

A few days later, asked to describe Doncic, Reeves replied, “He’s an idiot.”

“They both realized that they both enjoy talking trash,” Redick said. “And in that regard their personalities are very similar. And so they can just naturally have a little bit of chemistry with each other.”

Reaves’ early-season dominance also serves another purpose — as a very public success story for the Lakers’ player-development program: from its scouting department that identified him coming out of Oklahoma, to its front office that upgraded him from a two-way contract to a standard roster spot after his first training camp, to its player development and coaching staff that have aided his development.

“We have a similar story – an undrafted guy – so I’m definitely going to try my hardest to learn and watch everything he does and try to be like him,” the Lakers rookie said. chris mannonwho is currently on a two-way contract, told ESPN. “Because it would be a great career for me.”

Bronny James too. “He’s one of the guys I love studying,” James told ESPN. “The way he uses his body against bigger defenders. He loves to put his shoulder into bigger defenders and take them off balance … and he makes really good stops and sets ball screens very well. I love watching that and trying to implement that.”

lakers ahead Jake LaraviaThose who signed with L.A. as a free agent this summer also turned to Reeves’ story.

“One of the reasons I chose the Lakers organization was you see the development of players and how Austin was one of those guys who got better in every category every year,” Laravia told ESPN.

Three weeks into the season, Reeves has been the focal point of a Lakers team near the top of the Western Conference standings. It’s a perch, and a role, that he doesn’t want to change.

“I’ve always thought about it, you do whatever you have to do to help the team,” Reeves said. “So, obviously, I’ve made steps and I’ve gotten better. The coaching staff has put more responsibility on me. But having them do this to me shows me that this is what I have to do to help us.”

“And obviously things will change when Braun comes back, but it’ll come back to, ‘What can I do to keep this train going?'”