Pat Beverley Calls Out Ex-NBA Player For Cold Take on Lakers Star

Former Los Angeles Lakers guard Patrick Beverley called out ex-NBA player-turned-analyst Chandler Parsons for his freezing-cold take on rising star Austin Reaves.

“White on White crime smh @ChandlerParsons. Now apologize like [a] man 🧍‍♂️,” Beverley wrote on X, tweet-quoting Parsons’ hot take on Reaves’ ceiling last year.

Parsons did not believe that at that time Reaves would take a major leap from being just a 15/5/5 player into a rising star this season.

“He’s not a player who’s going to continue to get exceptionally better. It’s not like the potential is through the roof with him,” Parsons said last year on the “Run It Back” show on FanDuel TV.

Chandler Parsons doesn’t believe Austin Reaves will progress beyond being a 15/5/5 player and feels he’s already approaching his ceiling

“He’s not a player who’s going to continue to get exceptionally better. It’s not like the potential is through the roof with him.”

(Via… pic.twitter.com/WixsiJFKlB

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) October 24, 2023

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Parson’s hot take turned into a freezing-cold take as Reaves blossomed into a bona fide third star behind LeBron James and Anthony Davis and then took another jump after the Luka Dončić trade.

Reaves’ rise has prompted the conversation about him as the best “third star” in the NBA.

ESPN’s Tim Legler said on “NBA Today” on Tuesday, March 18 that the conversation should start now. But Beverley had already been on the Reaves hype train since February.

“I like what the Lakers have,’ Beverley said on his “Pat Bev Podcast with Rone” on Feb. 12. “And you talk about a third option, you look around the NBA, he might be the best third option in the NBA in Austin Reaves.”

Luka and LeBron Make Austin Reaves ‘Life Easy’

Reaves is averaging a career-best 20.6 points on 46/36/88 shooting split with 6.1 assists, 4.7 rebounds and also a career-high 1.2 steals per game.

Since Dončić’s Lakers debut on Feb. 10, Reaves is averaging 21.6 points from 19.1 points before the blockbuster trade. The ball-dominant Dončić has not stunted Reaves’ growth at all. He’s getting more good looks as the third option behind Dončić and James, two of the best passers in the game.

“‘Bron and Luka are so good,” Reaves said after dropping 31 points in the Lakers’ 134-127 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday. “They make my life easy. Unselfish players who like to play the game the right way, are unbelievable passers. So you just try to get the best outcome in every single possession. If we do that, locked into doing that, I feel like we can get a good shot every possession.

“So just having that creativity in whatever we’re running and just trusting it and trusting the pass is a big thing and I felt like we did that well.”

JJ Redick Unlocked Austin Reaves

Reaves’ agent, Aaron Reilly, knew this was coming.

Reilly was ecstatic when the Lakers officially named JJ Redick as the team’s new head coach, replacing Darvin Ham.

“This coach is about to show a different part of Austin’s game [that] none have you seen. Kept receipts on all that third superstar [expletive]. Great hire for LA – going to be a big year next season,” Reilly tweeted in June of last year.

This coach is about to show a different part of Austin’s game none have you seen. Kept receipts on all that third superstar bullshit.

Great hire for LA – going to be a big year next season https://t.co/vJkZBuXWCL

— Aaron Reilly (@AMRAgency) June 20, 2024