INJURIES? UPSETS? TRY ROOTING FOR “HILLBILLY KOBE” AND SACTOWN

As expected, the NBA playoffs are bonkers already, but the preposterous (Austin Reaves’ breakthrough) and the improbable (the renaissance of the Kings) allow for convenient underdog allegiances

     He’ll be needing a better nickname. A shoe line, too. Austin Reaves is about to break out as a cult hero, a home slice of Americana embraced by basketball sophisticates who want a sobriquet less sensitive and more appropriate than “Hillbilly Kobe.” Did someone suggest Big Country? It was assigned decades ago to another rural intruder with a similar last name, but maybe it can be dusted off like a chicken coop.

     Slow, skinny, pasty-white and haircut-challenged, Reaves looked like no one else on the hardwood Sunday in Memphis, where he could have been an alien dropped into an unsuspecting arena by artificial intelligence or a tourist who missed the last bus to Graceland. Was he the real Slim Shady, this interloper who grew up on a 300-acre farm about 100 miles northwest of Beale Street in the Arkansas hinterlands — in Newark, between Oil Trough and Sulphur Rock, not far from Possum Grove and Bald Knob — and was known to let cows run circles around him as a kid? Or should we just let the man anoint himself?

     “I’m him! I’m him!” Reaves shouted at his teammates in FedEx Forum, as he scored nine straight points during a 14-point flurry in the fourth quarter.

     “Him’’ being who, exactly? The expression, of course, is a sports-adopted phrase declared by an athlete as he’s taking over a game. Usually, the bravado is voiced by a superstar such as his teammate, LeBron James, but in the raw moment, Reaves believed he was Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and LeBron wrapped into one hoops fairy tale. Razorback Jesus, perhaps?

     What we do know is this: Not since Jed Clampett loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly — “Hills, that is … swimming pools, movie stars” — has a backwater boy rocked Hollywood like Reaves. He won a playoff game for the Los Angeles Lakers on a day when Ja Morant, already established as a reckless fool, flew through the air in a wild dunk attempt, hit the floor hard, shrieked as if staring at a handgun, re-injured his right hand and damaged the Grizzlies’ chances of surviving the first-round Western Conference series. This while the usually wiser Giannis Antetokounmpo, who should know better, attempted the same acrobatics and injured his back in a Milwaukee loss. Neither realized that defenders are willing to take charges, like NFL teams girding for goal-line stands, knowing a collision might prove costly for the initiators.

     Is this how the NBA postseason is going to roll? A bonkers blitz of injuries and upsets, with Miami beating the Bucks in the opener but losing Tyler Herro? Will we see more senselessness from Russell Westbrook, who typically went 3 of 19 from the field and still helped the Clippers to a stunning win in Phoenix  — but had to address a halftime confrontation with a fan? Did he really make two free throws with 17.7 seconds left, then block Devin Booker’s layup to preserve the victory … and end up on a viral video? Yep, that was Russ the Cuss, unable to help himself again, confronting a Suns supporter in a private club area used by visiting players as a detour to the locker room.

     “Watch your mouth, mother f——er!” shouted Westbrook, clutching his crotch region, his jersey rolled up to show his abs, as a young boy ate pizza in a chair beside a security officer trying to keep peace.

     “Take it like a man,” retorted the fan, holding a beer can.

     If it’s business as usual in a manic, social-media-poisoned league — and I spent a column last week detailing the madness of the regular season — the proper viewing strategy is to root for the underdogs. Already, they’re emerging from improbable places. We have one in the Sacramento Kings, who won their first postseason game in 17 years in an arena located at 500 David J. Stern Walk — named for the late commissioner who prevented the franchise from moving to Seattle, Anaheim and even Virginia Beach — then participated at courtside in sport’s newest victory ritual.

     “Light the beam!” the long-beleaguered Sactown crowd chanted as star guard De’Aaron Fox, who’d just outplayed Stephen Curry in a victory over the dynasty-chasing Golden State Warriors, pushed a button on the scorer’s table. Magically, an 1,800-watt laser lit the downtown sky purple. Wouldn’t you rather be in Sacramento at the moment than San Francisco, where homelessness is a fentanyl-and-feces crisis, and where tech-on-tech violence led to an app executive’s heart-stabbed killing on a street in a luxury neighborhood? Go ahead and beam us all up, Kings, and eject anyone who doesn’t like it, including rapper and Warriors fan E-40, who was removed from his courtside seat Saturday.

     “Sacramento showed out tonight," Fox said. “But doing this for the fans, just knowing the way that they support this team through thick and thin — really thin. It's just a testament to the way they are.”

     Yet the revival of the Kings, long derided as the slapstick Kangz, seems normal compared to the rise of Reaves. Always a fan of Kobe, he wanted to play for the Lakers as a collegian at Oklahoma, asking his agents to inform other teams not to draft him in the second round in 2021. Sure enough, the Lakers signed him as an undrafted free agent, and as James took an interest, it quickly became obvious he wouldn’t be bouncing between the big club and G League. “I knew from the first practice what we had when we grabbed him, that he wasn’t going to be a two-way player for long,” James said after the Game 1 victory. “Then a couple of weeks went by, and I knew he was going to get a guaranteed contract at some point. I just know. I’ve been around the game long enough to know great basketball IQ players, and I know the type of players that fit with my game. I knew Austin would be that right away.”

     Now, playing at the all-time bargain price of $1.6 million, Reaves is about to be PAID, as they say. The Lakers might have to commit as much as $60 million, which would buy a lot of pigs and grains, if another team makes him a four-year offer as expected. Starting in March, when he moved into the starting lineup, Reaves has averaged 18.3 points on 57.1 percent shooting. His 23 points in the 128-112 victory were augmented by his passing, including a behind-the-back present to another emerging role player, Rui Hachimura, for a three-pointer. No wonder fans at Crypto.com Arena showered him with adoring “MVP” chants for weeks, as he helped the Lakers squeeze into the postseason.

     “For them to recognize what I do — uh, obviously, I’m not an MVP-caliber player. Those guys are really good,” Reaves said in his soft drawl. “For them to do that for me is special and means a lot to me. … You know, every time I take the court, I try to play with a sense of urgency and leave it all out on the floor. I just feel like basketball should be played that way. Every sport, you should give it 110 percent at all times. Obviously, that’s never sustainable.”

     Yeah, he’s a target now, especially after a recent stretch when he scored 35 points in one victory and went for 25 points and 11 assists in another. Sadly, some backlash will be racially driven. Former NBA player Rashad McCants, a washout who went on to play in seven other countries, ripped Reaves and the fortune he’s about to make. “What? Stop it! Austin what? Fifty million?” he said recently. “At four (years) for $25 million, he’s stealing. I’m like, Austin Reaves? Y’all giving him ($50 million) ‘cause, one, he’s white, and one, he’s playing with the Lakers and they trash. So it’s like, if the Lakers ain’t trash, he ain’t playing.”

     They aren’t trash at the moment. They won’t win the NBA title when Anthony Davis always is an errant step or twitch from two weeks in his civvies, but if the Lakers get past the Grizzlies, guess what might await them next?

     The Beam.

     Austin Reaves vs. Sactown.

     Not to diminish the colossal experiences that also make the NBA playoffs watchable: Joel Embiid hauling his 290 pounds through the lane, Jimmy Butler doing his bad-ass snarl at both ends, Jayson Tatum hellbent on overcoming his struggles in the Finals, Curry with the ball on a string, Kevin Durant trying to prove he can win a title beyond the Bay Area, Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson returning a playoff pulse to Madison Square Garden, Kawhi Leonard making amends for years of annoying load management, Nikola Jokic barely breaking a sweat as he awaits a possible third straight MVP trophy.

     But I’m focused on the unthinkable: Austin Reaves ascending from a hoop on a farm to scream “I’m him! I’m him!” while the sports world smiles. “It’s a lot of emotions,” he said. “You dream about being on a stage. It’s the playoffs. And I got hot late and I had fun.”

     Crazy fun.

     If you look hard enough, it’s out there. Is it time to start scouting for talent in Oil Trough, Possum Grove and Bald Knob?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.