Austin Reaves, Lakers Reportedly Agree to 4-Year, $56M Contract in NBA Free Agency

After receiving a qualifying offer from the Los Angeles Lakers, Austin Reaves has agreed to a long-term deal with the team.

Per Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, Reaves' new contract will pay him $56 million over four years.

As Reaves made a name for himself down the stretch in the regular season and again in the playoffs, his future with the Lakers was uncertain.

The Lakers announced Tuesday they extended qualifying offers to both Reaves and Rui Hachimura, giving them the ability to match any offer sheet either player received in free agency, with the Lakers having early Bird rights on the 25-year-old guard.

He originally joined the team 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.

He 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 as a starter. He continued to play well with 16.9 points, 4.6 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game and a 44.3 percent success rate from behind the arc in 16 games.

The Athletic's Danny Leroux highlighted a way 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 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.

Fortunately for the Lakers, they didn't have to worry about that and were able to retain a talented young player who was integral to their second-half surge as they made a run to the postseason.

Reaves is going to have the highest expectations of his career going into next season, but based on the trajectory he's been on over the past two years, there's no reason to think he won't continue to ascend.