Austin Reaves Not Backing Down After Lakers Drop Game 3 to Thunder

The Los Angeles Lakers dropped Game 3 to the Oklahoma City Thunder 131-108, going down 3-0 in the Western Conference Semifinals. Austin Reaves had plenty to say after the loss, and none of it sounded like a team ready to give up.

Speaking in his postgame press conference, Reaves made the Lakers' message for Game 4 very clear.

"We need to come and compete. There's a bunch of guys in this locker room that are competitors and basically the message after the game is we're going to come in here and we're going to win. So, obviously, this situation sucks but that doesn't give us the license to quit. We've gotta come in here and compete. We owe our organization that, we owe each other that and we owe our fans that. So, we're going to come in here and play as hard as we can."

That kind of tone from a veteran guard matters when a team is staring down a 3-0 hole. No team in NBA history has ever come back from that deficit to win a series.

Austin Reaves Breaks Down What Went Wrong Against the Thunder in Game 3

Reaves was not just rallying the troops though. He also gave an honest look at why Oklahoma City has been so hard to deal with in this series.

"Yeah, I mean, they're a connected group that their pieces fit basically perfect. So, it's tough to beat them, they've got a good coaching staff over there that does a great job of managing the game the way that this team needs the game to be managed and they've got really good players," as per Lakers.

He then pointed to a trend that has been hurting the Lakers across recent games, the inability to carry strong first-half play all the way through.

"I mean you could say that. [I] thought we played really good in the first half, even a little bit in the third quarter. [That] has kind of been the trend the last couple of games, just gotta figure out how to take that first half and move it to the second."

All of this is happening without Luka Doncic, who has been sidelined with a grade 2 hamstring strain since early April. He has not played a single minute in this series, and with the Lakers now down 3-0, his return is looking increasingly unlikely to happen before the season ends.

LeBron James and Reaves have been carrying the offensive load in his absence, but it has not been enough against the top seed in the West. Fixing that second-half drop-off is the most pressing issue heading into Game 4.

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