SACRAMENTO — The game ball sat a few feet to the left of Austin Reaves’ locker on the gray carpet that was still soaking wet from the ice bucket his teammates dumped on his head. The Lakers’ wild 127-120 win over the Kings Sunday night, without stars Luka Dončić and LeBron James, was the cause for celebration.
Reaves had just played the NBA game of his life, and here was the proof. I opened my laptop and showed him two lists.
The first — Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant, Cedric Ceballos, Wilt Chamberlain, Anthony Davis, Gail Goodrich, LeBron James, Rudy LaRusso, George Mikan, Shaquille O’Neal and Jerry West — consisted of every Laker who scored 50 points in a game.
“OK,” Reaves said with a disbelieving laugh.
The second — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who notched all 10 of his 50-point games as a Milwaukee Buck), Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Dončić — was a list of the only players to finish a game with at least 51 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists, according to Stathead.
Jarred Vanderbilt peered at the screen and saw those names.
“Woooo, you’re top 10 all time, boy,” Vanderbilt said, gassing Reaves up. “You’re up there with Wilt?!?”
Soon enough.
By the time the databases are updated, the game Reaves played Sunday, 51-11-9 with just two turnovers in a 127-120 win in Sacramento, will be on both of those lists — an unquestioned all-timer from a player who still thinks he was a never-supposed-to-be.
“Every time I see something like that,” Reaves told the Athletic, “it’s like, ‘Me?’ ‘Why me?’”
He added: “I don’t know. I obviously know I’m a good basketball player. I believe in myself. But those are like … those are like the greatest players ever. And my name just randomly pops up.”
How this happened is a great story.
The short version is that Reaves, a son of two college basketball stars, grew up on a farm in a tiny Arkansas town. He was good enough to score 73 points in a high school game, but small and skinny enough to be skipped over by most recruiters. He couldn’t really get his hands on the basketball in two years at Wichita St. and transferred to Oklahoma. And despite averaging 18.3 points per game as a senior, he went undrafted and signed a two-way contract with the Lakers.
Sunday, after Reaves led the Lakers to a win in Sacramento, James talked about his teammate’s “50-piece nugget” to his 52.3 million X followers. And Dončić called Reaves the “Goat” to 10.5 million people on Instagram.
50 piece 🐔 nugget!!!!! That boy AR TOOOO TOUGH!!
— LeBron James (@KingJames) October 27, 2025
But more important than the origin story is the destination.
Sunday wasn’t the first time Reaves found himself in rare air. It probably won’t be the last, either.
In his final game as a rookie, Reaves had 31 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists. Blake Griffin and Oscar Robertson were the only other first-year players to do that. Baylor, James and Abdul-Jabbar were the only other Lakers to ever have a game like that.
Last season, he became the first Laker since 1983-84 to have 45 points, seven assists, seven rebounds and three steals in a game — a win against Indiana. The other 45-7-7 games in Lakers history at that point all belonged to Baylor, Bryant, James, West and Magic Johnson.
It doesn’t make sense, not even to him.
“What do I do that’s exceptional, like better than 95 percent of people that play basketball?” he wondered on Sunday night as his teammates yelled for him to head for the bus.
He didn’t ask because he knew the answer. Reaves asked because he doesn’t know. And yet he keeps having games like this.
“Like, it’s so apparent every single day he’s in the gym and he just loves competition. He thrives on competition,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said.
Jake LaRavia, after looking at those same lists (“that’s crazy,” he said), broke down the ways Reaves can make a defense pay.
“AR, he’s just so tough. He’s just so good,” LaRavia told The Athletic. “He’s got a variety of ways he can score — the mid-range, three, can get to the basket. He can draw fouls at an elite level. And tonight, he just got going, was getting to his spots. And he was just making everything.
“AR’s…. he’s good. He’s just really good. There’s nothing else to say.”
Part of the underdog story that has stuck with Reaves, at least in his mind, went out the window in his first NBA mini-camp when he took the court with a team full of vets like James, Davis, Westbrook and Carmelo Anthony and left the first day believing he at least belonged in the NBA.
Days later, the Lakers converted his two-way deal into a standard contract. But Sunday night in Sacramento, even as he left the locker room cradling the ball he just scored 51 points with under his arm, Reaves still had a hard time wrapping his head around the company he was now, statistically, on the same level with.
“I still don’t feel that way. I don’t know why. Obviously, I did it. And I’ve done crazy things multiple times. So why not? I don’t know,” Reaves told me. “But it’s still Wilt. You named f—— players that are in the Hall of Fame. And I’m an undrafted guy that literally got an opportunity on a two-way. … I’m not supposed to be doing this.”
Since the Lakers traded for Dončić, Reaves has played three games without either him or James healthy enough to play. In those three games, somehow, Reaves is averaging 44.3 points, 8.7 rebounds and 9.7 assists.
The better number? The Lakers have won two of those games.
“I just want to win. I’m not going out there ‘Oh I’m going to get 50.’ I have no interest in that. I’m interested in winning. I love to win — at anything,” he said. “If we would’ve lost, it’s still different, but it’s not as much of an accomplishment. And a lot of people will say that, but I don’t think a lot of people mean that.”
As we walked to the bus late Sunday and spitballed at the reasons why he’d just pulled off another once-in-a-career game, he admitted that he still doubts himself. Maybe it’ll happen before a game or during a slump. But when that happens, one thing always seems to pull him out.
“I literally get lost in basketball,” Reaves said. “During the game, I lose myself. And it just becomes — it’s weird to say — but it’s like I was literally born to play basketball.”
Maybe some things are better left unexplained and misunderstood. Maybe there’s no rational reason why LeBron James, Luka Dončić, Kobe Bryant, Magic Johnson, Jerry West and Elgin Baylor all share real estate in the history books with Austin Reaves.
Or, maybe Reaves is just a natural and ended up right where he should.
