ROSEMONT, Ill. – Austin Reaves spots Mick Cronin five, maybe six shots a side whenever they play golf.
It’s the least the star Lakers guard can do given how the UCLA men’s basketball coach hooked him up with his other favorite game.
When Reaves arrived in LA five years ago, he ran into a familiar problem for anyone new to the city.
“Anybody who plays golf in LA knows you can’t get on public courses, you can’t get the tee time,” Cronin said Thursday at Big Ten media days. “The robots take them all. The governor’s even involved in stopping them.”
So Cronin introduced Reaves to a friend who took him to Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades.
“Next thing you know,” Cronin said, “they’re best friends.”
Cronin joins the games whenever he can, noting that he works and only has time to golf in the summer. Reaves, who recently signed a four-year, $184.7-million contract extension after his best season with the Lakers, might be nearly as good a golfer as he is a shooting guard.
“If anybody in the NBA is better than him or as good as him,” Cronin said, “it would be Steph [Curry] and Steph only – he’s that good.”
In typical Cronin fashion, he likes to give Reaves a hard time about being a ball hog.
“My golfing buddy don’t pass it a lot,” Cronin said of the player who averaged 23.3 points and 5.5 assists last season, “so he shoots it a lot.”
Reaves also apparently doesn’t like to spend much of the money he’s made.
“He’s been using my friend’s car for a year,” Cronin said. “I’m telling you, he just bought a car last week, it’s unbelievable. I need to get him to speak to the team about saving money.”
