After the Lakers’ victory against the Blazers on Sunday night, Austin Reaves responded to his new existence as the team’s sixth man.

The Los Angeles Lakers, who finished the previous season on a high note, haven’t exactly taken the world by storm to start the 2023–24 campaign. Their bad start to games, when they often fall behind and must build comeback after comeback, has contributed to their underperformance. LeBron James and Anthony Davis have had to put in incredible efforts every night to get them back into the game.

The Lakers coaching staff changed the lineup to include Cam Reddish, who gives the club more two-way presence in the starting lineup, and brought Austin Reaves, the team’s breakthrough guard from the previous season, off the bench to offer the team more firepower whenever James sits. Reaves was the team’s sixth man even without James in the Lakers’ Sunday night win against the struggling Portland Trail Blazers, and it seems like that will be his position going forward.

Reaves, nevertheless, is accepting his “demotion” to the Lakers bench since all he wants is to do everything he can to help the team win.

“Basketball is basketball for me… trying to play the same way regardless of situation. That’s really it. I feel like my family, especially my brother, did a really good job of teaching me at a young age how to play the game,” Reaves said in his postgame presser, per Michael Corvo, ClutchPoints Lakers beat reporter. “That’s really the main thing, just being myself, trusting what I do, but at the same time just playing the right way.”

Austin Reaves should definitely adopt this approach, particularly considering that he hasn’t been able to maintain his level of performance from the previous season to the start of this one. Furthermore, it’s not like Reaves has suddenly isolated himself from the rest of this Lakers team. He is still often used by the club to create offense, and they have enough faith in him to promote him to the position of lead playmaker and creator of shots off the bench.

Reaves is also helping the Lakers win their final minutes of play; on Sunday night, he even finished ahead of starting point guard D’Angelo Russell. This decision has worked brilliantly for the Purple and Gold so far, as the Lakers have won the two games in which he has been their sixth man.