Austin Reaves Receives Lakers $2.2M Qualifying Contract Offer, Will Become RFA

Coming off a breakout season, Austin Reaves is going to be able to test the market as a restricted free agent.

The Los Angeles Lakers announced Tuesday that they extended Reaves a $2.2 million qualifying offer, which makes him a restricted free agent.

The Lakers can still negotiate a new long-term deal with Reaves, but he's also free to speak with other teams.

If another club signs Reaves to an offer sheet, the Lakers have the right to match it if they want to retain him.

Reaves originally joined the Lakers as an undrafted free agent on a two-way contract in August 2021.

Appearing on The Point Forward Podcast in March (starts at 34:30 mark), Reaves addressed the possibility of leaving Los Angeles in the offseason.

"I would like to be here. It's the NBA though, it's a business at the end of the day. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't talented enough to come into the league at 18 or 19 years old, so a couple contracts behind someone that's a one-and-done. Anybody that says we don't play the game for money, to me, is lying. I feel like, if you wasn't getting paid, you wouldn't be here doing it. Obviously, everybody loves the game, but I wanna make as much money as I can and be as successful as I can, no matter where it's at."

The Lakers signed Reaves to a standard contract for two years before the start of the 2021-22 season. He appeared in 61 games as a rookie, averaging 7.3 points on 45.9 percent shooting.

Reaves became a critical player off the bench for head coach Darvin Ham in 2022-23. The Oklahoma alum averaged 13.0 points per game on 39.8 percent three-point shooting in 64 appearances.

During the postseason, Reaves was heavily relied on a starter. He continued to play well with 16.9 points, 4.6 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game with a 44.3 percent success rate from behind the arc in 16 games.

The Athletic's Danny Leroux highlighted a way that Reaves may have been priced out of staying with the Lakers through the Arenas provision in the collective bargaining agreement if another team had significant interest in signing him:

"When owners and players created the Arenas provision, they also opened up a path for the affected restricted free agents through the offer sheet process. While offer sheets in this situation cannot go over the nontaxpayer MLE (mid-level exception) amount for the first two seasons (with up to a 5 percent bump in Year 2), they are allowed to push the third season of the offer sheet as far as the player in question's full maximum salary for that year had the signing restriction not been in place for the first two seasons, though it can be lower than that, too, of course."

Per Luke Adams of Hoops Rumors, the Arenas provision was added to the CBA in 2005 after a situation involving former three-time All-Star Gilbert Arenas when he was an early Bird rights free agent with the Golden State Warriors after the 2002-03 season.

The Washington Wizards signed Arenas to a six-year, $65 million offer sheet with an $8.5 million salary in the first season. The Warriors were capped out and unable to match the deal, sending Arenas to Washington.

It's unclear if the Lakers will be put in a position where they don't want to match an offer for Reaves, but his ceiling has been raised after his performance last season.