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DETROIT — Austin Reaves couldn’t pretend it was a good shot.
Even with the Lakers star guard having the greenest of green lights after going on a personal 7-0 run as the hosts attempted to come back from down 26 points, Reaves kept it real about what followed.
After John Collins nudged the ball out of his hands after running a pick and roll with Walker Kessler, Reaves lost possession of the ball in his left hand with his momentum taking him toward the sideline opposite of the Pistons’ bench.
But he was able to get the ball back to the hottest hand on the court throughout Sunday night, regaining possession and taking a single dribble before firing up a 27-footer with 11 seconds still on the shot clock.
“It was a terrible shot,” Reaves admitted postgame. “Absolutely.”
It didn’t matter, with the ball bouncing off the top of the backboard before falling through the net to give the Lakers a 78-61 lead and putting Reaves at 32 points after scoring 10 points in just over two minutes of game time for his first 30-point game of the season.
The 6-foot-5 Oklahoma product didn’t even try to act like he called bank, with the shot reminding him of the kind of miraculous looks his backcourt co-star regularly attempts.
“Oh, it was 100% lucky,” he said. “Honestly, when I stepped back and shot it, I was like, ‘this is some b——- Luka [Dončić] would shoot.’ And I didn’t try to bank it in. It went in, it looks the same in the stat sheet.”
The 3-pointer was just one of the many wild shots Reaves made en route to scoring a season-high 43 points in the Lakers’ 121-116 win over the Pistons at Little Caesars Arena.
He also hit a fadeaway from behind the backboard midway through the first quarter for his seventh and eighth points of the night which gave the Lakers an early 18-7 lead.
“Lucky shot,” Reaves said. “I was a lucky player [Sunday night].”
And with Dončić, the league’s leading scorer with an average of 40.1 points per game, watching from the sidelines against the Pistons because of back tightness, the Lakers greatly benefitted from Reaves’ luck.
