Report: There are ‘sharks in the water’ monitoring Austin Reaves’ future

Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves is off to a great start in the 2025-26 NBA season, and it’s made his future with the franchise an interesting talking point.

Reaves can opt out of the final year of his contract this coming offseason to become an unrestricted free agent, which seems like a forgone conclusion. He will have a major market for his services if he keeps playing at an All-Star level.

There reportedly are people “monitoring” Reaves’ situation in Los Angeles amid his hot start to the campaign.

“Definitely monitoring, which is a fun – that’s a word that makes some people laugh,” NBA insider Marc Stein said when asked if there are “sharks in the water” monitoring Reaves. “But yeah, a lot of people are monitoring.

“Again, the question will be, right now, there are teams projected to have cap space. But as we know, this is an era of everyone doing extensions, teams making trades, trading for guys before the February deadline to use their cap space before they even wait to free agency.

“So, we’re gonna have to see when we get to July 30th how much cap space is actually out there. At this point, there does project to be a handful of teams with space whereas last summer we had none. Last summer, we had Brooklyn with space, and the [Brooklyn] Nets made it very clear that they weren’t gonna use it.”

Even though there may be teams with cap space that could attempt to poach Reaves from the Lakers, Stein added that there appears to be mutual interest between the two sides in keeping the rising star in L.A.

“I would say the early signals more than suggest the Lakers wanna keep Austin Reaves, and Austin Reaves wants to be a Laker.” Stein said. “That’s where we are as we speak.”

Through seven games this season, Reaves is averaging 31.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 9.3 assists per game while shooting 48.9 percent from the field and 34.4 percent from 3-point range for the Lakers.

Los Angeles is off to a 5-2 start after it beat the Miami Heat on Sunday. Reaves turned in another strong performance in that game, scoring 26 points while dishing out 11 assists.

The Lakers have yet to play a game with star forward LeBron James (sciatica) this season, and that’s opened up a massive role for Reaves in the offense alongside star guard Luka Doncic.

On top of that, Doncic recently missed time due to injury, allowing Reaves to operate as the No. 1 option for Los Angeles in a few contests. Overall this season, the results have been stunning for the 27-year-old, who has a real All-Star case through the first couple of weeks of the campaign.

It’s certainly possible that his numbers will dip as the season progresses, but there’s no doubt that he’s making a case to get paid quite a bit in the offseason.

Hopefully, the Lakers will be able to find common ground with Reaves to keep him in Los Angeles for years to come.