Lakers News: "No Excuse" For Failure In Houston, Austin Reaves Opines

LA's second-year shooting guard had a big game Wednesday, but it didn't help.

On Wednesday night, your Los Angeles Lakers fell 114-110 to a 17-52 Houston Rockets squad whose youthful vigor and relative health clearly got the better of a club without probably its two best centers or All-Star small forward LeBron James.

Backup wing Austin Reaves spoke with gathered reporters about what went wrong, and how the team can adjust moving forward.

Reaves scored an inefficient 24 points in the game on 6-of-14 field goal shooting, dished out seven dimes and grabbed four boards.

Across his last 11 games with LA, the reserve shooting guard is averaging 15.5 points on 57% shooting overall from the floor (43% from deep).

"It's a back-to-back, there's no excuse everybody has those in the league...we, as players gotta do better." Austin Reaves feels the pressure and knows every game is a must-win from now on. pic.twitter.com/mLhFNnzfyn

— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) March 16, 2023

"It's a back-to-back, there's no excuse, everybody has those in the league, so you've got to find something to energize you. It's hard sometimes," Reaves said. "But at the end of the day with where we're at in the standings and what we're trying to do, that should be enough. itself. So we as players [have] got to do better. Just trying to figure out something for the group to get going so... slow start, a lot of mistakes, a lot of missed advantages on our defensive end, but at the same time they're trying to do stuff... We've just got to fix it."

At 34-36, LA is running out of time, with just 12 games left on its schedule to stay the course and qualify for the play-in tournament. Its next game is tonight against a Dallas Mavericks club that will be missing its best player. This is pretty much a must-win.

Are you following us on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube yet? Join the conversation as we discuss the latest Lakers news and rumors with fans like you!