Team USA Has A Magic Wand At FIBA: That’s Is Extremely Confident Austin Reaves

Austin Reaves’ game underwent a drastic and rapid change on Monday during Team USA’s FIBA World Cup preliminary round victory against Greece.

Team USA Has A Magic Wand At FIBA: That’s Is Extremely Confident Austin Reaves

Midway into the fourth quarter, Team USA was comfortably up. Reaves took a ball from Josh Hart on the right wing and signalled for Hart to screen for him. Reaves dribbled across the screen, crossed over to his right hand between his knees, then to his left hand behind his back.

Reaves noticed a route to the rim as his defender Nikos Rogkavopoulos reached in, crossed over once again, took off forward, and left Rogkavopoulos in the dust. Reaves avoided a turning Kostas Papanikolaou on his way to the basket and finished with a finger roll at the rim.

Reaves is undoubtedly a star in his own right; otherwise, he wouldn’t be a part of the sport’s most storied national team, competing for a world title on the other side of the globe, with every touch of the ball being loudly applauded by the supporters who have made him their favourite USA player.

After the United States won its first pool-play game at the FIBA World Cup, teammate Anthony Edwards stated in a widely shared video, “Austin, you’re HIM!” Reaves got 12 points in the win against New Zealand, and he then put up 15 points in the victory over Greece, securing their passage into the second round of the competition.

Reaves has come off the bench in each of the games and shot 58 per cent from the field, 56 per cent on 3-pointers and passed for four assists.

Austin Reaves was the ideal candidate for USA Basketball’s bid for redemption at the 2023 FIBA World Cup for a variety of reasons, but his demonstrable grit is probably the most convincing.

Reaves discovered early on that a sporting career outside of the 300-acre farm he anticipated wouldn’t be as simple as he had hoped. He was born and reared on the outskirts of Newark, Arkansas, a town with a population of 1100 people, where the stop signs haven’t yet been changed to stop lights.

How did a young man from a farm in a little town of 1,180 people in Arkansas, which is literally 100 miles from anything, become a competitor that fans in Asia were ecstatic to see?

“He’s confident,” said Lon Kruger, who coached him with the Oklahoma Sooners.

“Confidence,” said college basketball analyst Fran Fraschilla, who called many of his games on ESPN.

“He’s a very confident kid,” said TCU coach Jamie Dixon, whose team allowed 41 points to Reaves in the final game of the 2019-20 season.

The remarkable conviction that not only does he belong on the floor alongside LeBron James, the most prolific scorer in the history of the sport, but that there are occasions when he should be blocking shots from King James helped him land that contract. Not only because he is open, either. He occasionally has the best chance to make a big basket against a certain opponent.

In the regular season, he scored 13 points on 40 percent of his three-point attempts on average, but during the Lakers’ run to the Western Conference Finals, he scored 17 points on 44 percent of his attempts.

Reaves exudes a confidence that he can bear the pressure.

 

 

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