Austin Reaves and his Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t knock off the Denver Nuggets in the first game of the NBA season, but maybe he can lash out on the driving range tomorrow to blow off some post-loss steam. Or perhaps go to his local course and fire a sub-70 round, which he’s done before, believe it or not.
That’s right. As if being a phenomenal basketball player with one of the coolest individual human interest stories/rises to NBA prominence of his generation wasn’t enough, he can golf the hell out of his ball.
Yeah…when you see that HUGE cut he takes with the driver into the poor golf simulator pad at the top of this video, you know it’s true. He is indeed a scratch golfer. Zero doubt in my mind.
I’d heard he played here and there with fellow Laker D’Angelo Russell. Never did I know Reaves could rip it up on the links like this. Regarding that 441-yard drive, I’d assume Reaves did it somewhere with the aid of altitude like Colorado or Nevada. A mountain course.
Reaves said he had a tail wind and that it was a downhill shot when he launched that 441-yard nuke. BUT STILL. That’s borderline, like, “the Earth’s gravity was out of sorts” type of stuff.
On Zach Lowe’s podcast The Lowe Post a while back, Reaves anointed himself as the best NBA golfer over Steph Curry… and looked forward to playing the greatest shooter ever someday:
This man is out here aspiring to compete with the golfing GOAT himself. Wow. Hey, it took Reaves a borderline delusional amount of self-belief to ascend from undrafted obscurity to key piece on an NBA title contender. It’s clear that work ethic translated extremely well to the golf course, too.
Give me a one-on-one match play showdown between Reaves and Steph. Have Reaves on one of those The Match celebrity two-on-two matchups. Beyond that, he must be an annual entrant now into the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in Lake Tahoe. Starting with the 2024 edition. Curry won this year’s event with an incredible eagle at the last hole.
Can you imagine Curry being in the hunt to successfully defend the trophy next July, only to have Reaves charging at him on the back nine? Talk about must-see TV.
