The Los Angeles Lakers played their third straight game without LeBron James and Luka Doncic, who are both out due to injuries that will keep them out for the next few games(more of them for LeBron), on Wed Oct 29 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, whom they defeated in a Friday night game in downtown Los Angeles last week. There were other inactive players such as Gabe Vincent and Marcus Smart for the Lakers, who were shorthanded and had lost their previous game on Mon Oct 27 against the Portland Trail Blazers. But they defeated the Sacramento Kings in the first game of a back-to-back and a big reason why is Austin Reaves’ fantastic offensive performances over the last few days. Once again, Reaves ended up having to put his superhero cape on as the Purple & Gold nearly choked a massive lead and one last play determined the winner of this game.

Reaves scored a career high 51 points in the Sunday night game in Sacramento and followed it up with a 41-point performance in the loss to Portland the next night. Some good news on the personnel side was that Jaxson Hayes was returning to the lineup after missing a couple of games due to knee soreness, making him available as a backup center behind DeAndre Ayton, whose stats have also been improving as well to start out the season. For Wednesday night’s game, Minnesota was without Anthony Edwards, who suffered a hamstring injury in a game against the Indiana Pacers on Sun Oct 26. The game started with the Wolves taking an early lead with good three-point shooting, but the Lakers ended up coming back to be down by only two points at the end of the first quarter. In the second quarter, the score stayed close as the Lakers started making more shots from the field and ended up scoring seven straight points to have a four-point lead at halftime.

Besides Reaves, Jake LaRavia was having a fantastic game with shooting mid-range and three-point shots and good bench contributions from forward Dalton Knecht and other players who would usually be sitting on the bench were helpful as well. In the third quarter, the Purple & Gold surged ahead to a big lead that was pushed up to as high as 20 points and it could have been around that tally at the end of the quarter if not for a quick scoring run by the Wolves that cut the lead down to 11 points heading into the fourth quarter. LaRavia was leading the way in points, while Reaves was leading in assists in already having a double-digit tally in that department. Minnesota was still within range thanks to contributions from Julius Randle and Jaden McDaniels along with a couple of good bench players such as Bones Hyland and Rob Dillingham. The fourth quarter was set to have a dramatic conclusion to this game or a potential continuation of it, since a load of games have gone to overtime so far in this NBA season.

The quarter started with a couple of baskets made by Knecht and Reaves, with the Lakers having a 16-point lead early on. They reclaimed that margin a couple of minutes later with a three-point shot made by LaRavia, and then a Rui Hachimura jump shot after the second-to-last timeout by Minnesota kept the lead at a sweet 16 points. But after that moment, the Timberwolves started clawing their way back again by lowering down the deficit they were facing with good buckets and solid stops on the defensive end of the floor. A three-point shot made by Mike Conley got the margin down to eight and even though Reaves made a three-pointer after that, Minnesota was not showing any signs of giving up. A dunk by Rudy Gobert and a three-pointer made by Donte DiVincenzo got the Lakers lead down to six and forced J.J Redick to call a timeout with around three minutes left in regulation. After the timeout, another missed shot occurred but an offensive foul on DiVincenzo(who picked up his fifth foul of the game, a mark that LaRavia had to deal with in the fourth quarter as well) led to a good floater by Ayton that pushed the lead back up to eight. But Randle drew a foul and made two free throws to get the lead back down to six for Los Angeles. On the next possession, Reaves missed a jump-shot and on the other end, McDaniels made a three-pointer that got the lead for the Lakers down to three.

This was a tense situation as a basket was needed to get the margin back up to two possessions. The Lakers were not able to do that and the Wolves got down by one on a dunk by McDaniels. Another missed shot by Reaves occurred with under 30 seconds left and with possession of the ball, the Wolves didn’t hesitate. Randle made a layup with around 10 seconds left to give Minnesota the long-awaited lead in the second half and Redick called a timeout to draw up a play that would serve as the game-winning shot attempt. Before that happened, the Wolves used their “foul to give” under two minutes to stall the Lakers with six seconds left and Redick called the final timeout of regulation at that moment. Out of the timeout, the inbounds pass occurred on the right side of the floor, with LaRavia passing the ball in to Reaves, who dribbled the ball past a couple of defenders into the paint. In the paint, with only a couple of seconds left, Reaves gathered to shoot a float shot and the ball went above the blocking arm of DiVincenzo and it fell straight into the hoop as the final buzzer went off. The Lakers had won the game after nearly choking it. Reaves celebrated with his teammates after managing another heroic performance, with lower scoring numbers but the one shot that mattered went in. In spite of choking a 20-point lead, the Purple & Gold managed to win their second game in as little as a week against the team that eliminated them from the playoffs last year. The Timberwolves put up a good effort and staged an incredible comeback, but it was not enough to beat the Lakers on this night.

Austin Reaves was the hero and leading scorer for Los Angeles, as he scored 28 points and tied a career-high in assists dished out in a single game with 16 dimes. He only shot three out of 11 from behind the arc and 9 of 24 from the floor, but he managed to do something that only one Lakers player has done in the first five games of a regular season. That thing is scoring 25-plus points and having five-plus assists, something only the late great Jerry West was able to do in a Lakers jersey to start out the 1970-71 season before Reaves’ solid five-game start to the 2025-26 season. Reaves also had some help from his teammates as Jake LaRavia led the team in scoring for most of the game, finishing with 27 points and eight rebounds, being almost perfect from the floor in having only one missed shot for the entire game. Three other players chipped in well for the Purple & Gold in this small rotation game, with DeAndre Ayton scoring 17 points and having 10 rebounds for a double-double, Rui Hachimura posting 17 along with having five rebounds and four assists and Dalton Knecht scoring 15 points off the bench. Guard Nick Smith Jr also chipped in with seven valuable points off the bench, so it was a full team effort for the Lakers on this night. The main scorers for Minnesota were Julius Randle and Jaden McDaniels, who both picked up the slack with Anthony Edwards out. Both of them scored 30+ points and had help from a combined effort from their fellow forwards and guards. But they weren’t able to win at the Target Center on this night as the Lakers moved to 3-2 in their first five games and the Wolves fell to 2-3.

The next game on-tap for Los Angeles will be its first game in this season’s NBA Cup tournament as they travel south to take on the Memphis Grizzlies in their first group play game. Other teams in the West Group B that the Lakers will face are the New Orleans Pelicans, Los Angeles Clippers and Dallas Mavericks. How they fare without Luka Doncic, LeBron James and others in the game on Halloween Night at the FedEx Forum will be interesting to see, but the guy clearly taking charge in their absence is Austin Reaves, who continues to provide a spark that has this team running on good vibes and great offensive execution. Let’s see if he can keep this act up.