Austin Reaves compares watching Dalton Knecht’s fourth quarter to nearly hitting hole-in-one

In the highest compliment he can give, Austin Reaves was as excited for Dalton Knecht as he was when he nearly got a hole-in-one recently.

There are two things that Austin Reaves truly loves: golf and basketball. While he’s adamant basketball is his No. 1, golf is not far behind.

He joked that he would use his prize money from the In-Season Tournament for a country club membership. He played in the American Century Championship this offseason. He has a whole Tik Tok account dedicated only to his golfing.

All that is necessary context to fully understand Reaves’ comments after Dalton Knecht put on a show in the Lakers penultimate preseason game.

Knecht scored 20 straight points in the fourth quarter and overtime as part of his 35 total on the night. He hit 3-pointers of increasing difficulty and helped the Lakers come from behind to earn the victory.

For Reaves, it was like nearly hitting a hole-in-one for an entire quarter.

“It’s, honestly, just pure excitement,” Reaves said. “As a teammate, you want your teammates to be successful and for him to go out there and put on a performance like that in the second half was unreal to watch. I almost hit a hole-in-one the other day. I hit it off the pin. That excitement I had then, I had it for the whole fourth quarter.

“It’s beautiful. You see how much work he puts in every single day. He’s hunting people down right after practice to shoot. You tip your hat to a guy like that. I expected all those shots to go in, to be honest.”

Boy, is that some high praise! It’s hard to imagine Reaves giving him much more praise than that.

Reaves wasn’t the only one celebrating Knecht’s wild fourth quarter on the bench. The entire roster treated each bucket as if they nearly hit a hole-in-one, too.

The question now is, if this was only what it was like to nearly hit a hole-in-one, what does actually doing it look like?

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.