The best pass Austin Reaves threw on Tuesday night was off the backboard.
He was in the open floor on the fastbreak and saw his Los Angeles Lakers teammate LeBron James trailing behind him. So Reaves lofted it off the board, and James rose up and threw it down.
It didn’t count as an assist, though.
Seems like quite the rip-off.
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“Apparently, per the NBA rulebook, throwing a pass off the backboard intentionally to a teammate for a score can not result in an assist,” ESPN’s Dave McMenamin wrote on X. “Seems like an easy fix for the competition committee in the offseason.”
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) February 4, 2026
Interestingly, it’s as if this play doesn’t count as anything.
The ESPN play-by-play just shows, “LeBron James makes running dunk.”
You would think if it wasn’t an assist that it would have to somehow count as a missed field goal attempt and then a rebound by James, but it doesn’t.
It’s as if Reaves never involved himself in the play at all.
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It’s just an assist, and Reaves will be plenty glad he threw the pass regardless. Reaves is just working his way back from injury and still coming off the bench, so it had to feel good to be involved in a highlight like this.
He ended the night with 15 points, four rebounds and one assist. He surely let his head hit the pillow thinking about the assist that didn’t even get called one, though, because there’s nothing like throwing a dime off the glass to the King.
