THE GRANDIOSE 8,000-SQUARE-FOOT Manhattan Beach mansion that Luka Doncic purchased this past offseason from tennis star Maria Sharapova, cementing his new home in Los Angeles, was designed with a minimalist motif.

Tall walls of bare concrete, massive glass doors and black metal accents in the five-bedroom residence guide dwellers through an open floor plan, with plenty of balconies and curated outdoor spaces to take in the pristine Pacific Ocean view.

Tucked inside the basement, there is a premium man cave amenity that doubles as an irresistible lure for competition junkies: a two-lane bowling alley.

The pins and wooden planks might not seem like an architectural fit with the rest of the home’s interior, but it serves an important purpose: something to sustain Doncic’s legendary competitive drive, even when he’s off the floor.

So when a text from Doncic popped up on Austin Reaves‘ phone on an off night in early December, inviting the Lakers guard to visit Doncic’s place, the itinerary was not just to turn on League Pass, eat dinner and shoot the breeze.

There would, of course, be competition involved.

“He was like, ‘Come over. We’re bowling,'” Reaves told ESPN.

Reaves made the 10-minute drive to his teammate’s crib, where he found not only Doncic, but two of Doncic’s friends, plus Lakers assistant coach Greg St. Jean and L.A.’s head video coordinator, Michael Wexler, awaiting his arrival.

Three-man teams were formed. Games were played. Scores were kept.

“But it all really came down to the 1-on-1 at the end,” Reaves said.

This is where Reaves’ and Doncic’s accounts of the night diverge.

“I won,” Doncic told ESPN.

“We bowled for, I think, maybe three games,” Reaves said. “And, yeah, I’m 3-0.”

“I’m sure he said he won,” Doncic said when informed of Reaves’ answer.

With no wiggle room to further protest Reaves, short of calling him a liar, Doncic took a different tact.

“I let him, you know, get comfortable,” Doncic said. “It was his first time in the house, so I let him get comfortable.”

And so goes the relationship between the Lakers’ starting backcourt mates.

Equal parts sarcastic and real, Doncic and Reaves’ budding bromance has set the tone for a Lakers team that has shot up to No. 4 in the Western Conference standings to begin the season, despite LeBron James missing more than half of L.A.’s games because of injuries.

The irreverence between Doncic and Reaves has not only kept the locker room loose, but also it has helped turned down the noise on potential pressure points that could distract a team: James’ career winding down; the franchise’s sale and Jeanie Buss’ subsequent decision to fire her brothers, Joey and Jesse, in the front office; and even Reaves’ contract status after turning down an $89 million extension in June.

Perhaps most importantly, it has established a culture for a Lakers group that appears to be as close knit as they come.

“We all know we have love for each other, but we can still be each other’s biggest critics,” Lakers rookie Adou Thiero told ESPN. “You always hear Austin and Luka, they’re always going back and forth about who is better at what. Oh, ‘You suck at this,’ ‘You suck at that,’ but you get on the court and … they’re sticking together, we’re all sticking together.”

WHILE DONCIC AND Reaves shared some success on the court last season — the Lakers were 16-10 when the duo played together — they didn’t have much of a relationship off of it.

“Bron said that he acted like I acted my rookie year: never talked,” Reaves said. “Kind of just stayed to himself. Which is understandable. I mean, with the crazy events that happened, you know it’s going to take time to get used to a new situation.”

After spending the first 5 ½ years of his career in Dallas, Doncic gravitated toward people he already knew when he first got to L.A., sources told ESPN.

He worked out with St. Jean, who previously had been an assistant for the Mavs. He sat near Maxi Kleber, who was included in the deal for Anthony Davis.

He conversed with coach JJ Redick, who had been his teammate, briefly, in Dallas and whom he had stayed in touch with as Redick embarked on a media career. (“I really respect him,” Doncic said of Redick during his introductory press conference. “You don’t see me go on podcasts. I went on his podcast twice.”)

And he would get most animated when he was around Dorian Finney-Smith, another former teammate with the Mavs, whom L.A. acquired in a trade a couple months before Doncic’s arrival.

A typical interaction would start with Doncic teasing Finney-Smith about his belly button being an “outie,” and Finney-Smith sparring right back by wondering how Doncic could be slower than him when he was six years younger.

Even after the disappointment of the Lakers’ first-round playoff loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves — a series in which a stomach bug derailed Doncic in Game 3 and Reaves missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer that would have forced overtime in Game 4 — the duo still hadn’t developed a connection.

So when Doncic signed a $165 million extension in August and celebrated the occasion by going on a trip with teammates, coaches and staffers to a Backstreet Boys concert at The Sphere in Las Vegas, Reaves missed a perfect opportunity to become closer with the Lakers’ new poster boy.

While Doncic was belting out the lyrics to “I Want It That Way,” Reaves was overseas, fulfilling an endorsement obligation for his signature Rigorer sneakers.

At the end of the night, Doncic posted to Instagram, showing him and a handful of teammates dressed in white for the show and going backstage, where he autographed one of his trading cards for Nick Carter and made a reel where it appeared he was deep in conversation with Brian Littrell — only for the camera to pan out and show the 5-foot-7 Littrell needing to kneel on top of a ping pong table to be eye level with the 6-foot-8 Doncic.

Wanting to show support, even from afar, Reaves posted a congratulatory message in response.

It didn’t take long for Doncic to see it.

“He slid [in my direct messages] and was like, ‘Thanks for coming to Vegas,'” Reaves recalled.

Reaves sent back a selfie from Xiamen, China.

“I could tell, like, the joking spirit that he had,” Reaves said. “Like, it was, just, a breath of fresh air. I could tell at that moment that we were going to have a good relationship.”

And Doncic’s response to the selfie? “I said he’s too big [for me],” Doncic said. “He’s selling shoes in China now.”

With their personalities beginning to mesh off the floor, they both knew the next step needed to be meshing their similar games on it.

Both players are three-level scorers and creators who thrive with the ball in their hands.

While their overlapping skill sets could have created tension over who would have control of the offense, the 27-year-old Reaves and 26-year-old Doncic have worked together seamlessly — which was especially important with James sidelined all of training camp, preseason and the first 14 games because of sciatica.

When the Lakers coaching staff huddled over the summer, whatever concerns they had about how to maximize each player without undercutting either of them quickly subsided.

“It helps so much that they both look to pass,” a Lakers coach told ESPN.

That trust in their fundamentals informs the offensive system the Lakers put in place.

“A lot of the, ‘How do we make this work’ was utility plays and then not overthinking like, ‘Oh, we got to run all this action,'” Redick said. “It’s like, ‘No, let’s get the ball to the best players and try to create advantages that way through a very simple system.’ We don’t have to overcomplicate things.”

So far, that simplicity has reaped considerable rewards. Doncic’s and Reaves’ combined scoring average of 61.4 points per game is the second-most by a duo in the last 60 years, according to ESPN Insights. James Harden and Russell Westbrook combined for 61.6 points per game in 2019-20.

They both constantly pressure defenses and draw fouls when they do. The Lakers lead all teams in points per direct drive per game, which is fueled by Reaves, who ranks first among all players with at least 200 drives this season. Doncic is second, according to GeniusIQ.

Doncic leads the league in free throw attempts per game, while Reaves is fourth. They are in range to become the first teammates to each average 9.0 or more free throw attempts per game since Harden and Dwight Howard did so for the Houston Rockets in 2013-14.

While they have joint command of the offense – in the games they’ve played together, Doncic and Reaves have scored or assisted on 288 of the 402 shots the Lakers have made (72%) – they’ve both had stretches where they’ve starred solo.

Doncic, for his part, scored 92 points in the Lakers’ first two games of the season.

After the second game — in which Doncic scored 49 points on 14-for-23 shooting, corralled 11 rebounds and dished out 8 assists in the Lakers’ 128-110 win over the Timberwolves — Reaves told ESPN that he thought Doncic could average 40 for the whole season.

When Doncic was told of Reaves’ opinion, he issued his own.

“Austin’s stupid,” he said.

Doncic then sat out the Lakers’ next three games with a left finger sprain and lower left leg contusion, and it was Reaves’ turn.

He averaged 40 points, 10 assists, 5.3 rebounds and 2.3 steals while guiding L.A. to a 2-1 record, punctuating the stretch with a game-winning floater at the buzzer to secure another victory against that same Wolves team that had ended their season a few months back.

If Doncic wasn’t sold on Reaves by that point, watching him dominate — and win — while he and James were in street clothes more than did it.

“He’s realizing, ‘F—, Austin is good!'” a team source told ESPN. “It was the same way he loved [Jalen] Brunson and loved Kyrie [Irving]. There’s an appreciation for great players.”

Luka Doncic on if he can average 40 points per game this season:
“That’s going to be tough …”
I followed up by saying that Austin Reaves told me he thinks he could.
Luka, with a big smile: “Austin’s stupid.” pic.twitter.com/jnLjKfe4CE

— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) November 1, 2025

THE COMPETITION BETWEEN the two knows no bounds. And neither does the incessant ribbing.

“I saw that we had — I don’t love saying this — many similarities in how we like to compete in all different things,” Reaves said. “Not just basketball. Whatever. Cards, bowling, darts … which he hasn’t beaten me at either.”

Reaves doesn’t watch football, but he picked the Minnesota Vikings in Week 15 in a wager against his teammate, just because he wanted Doncic’s beloved Dallas Cowboys to lose.

While they each are loath to concede any ground to the other, Reaves admits that Doncic is the favorite in foosball, and Doncic isn’t trying to see Reaves on the golf course.

“I’m ducking him,” Doncic said. “I can’t golf.”

Where they both agree, though, is what the Lakers need to do to be real contenders in the West.

Despite the Lakers’ 19-9 start, they rank 24th in defense. The Oklahoma City Thunder and the Detroit Pistons, which sit atop the West and East standings, respectively, rank No. 1 and No. 2.

“For the start of the season, I was playing great defense,” Doncic, who is hoping to play on Christmas Day after dealing with a left calf contusion, told ESPN. “Trying to get back to that.”

Reaves, who recently missed three games with a mild left calf strain before coming off the bench Tuesday in Phoenix, agrees.

“I think we just got to get healthy and log minutes together and guard with all five guys on the court,” he said. “You have to be locked into every little detail, every little rotation. When you do that, that’s when you become a good defense.”

It figures to be a season-long challenge for this Lakers team, especially with the roster as presently constructed.

But it’s one that Doncic and Reaves won’t shy away from. And one in which Doncic and Reaves can channel their competitive spirits together — including on Thursday against the dynamic Houston Rockets.

Meanwhile, their relationship continues to grow.

Reaves has been back to Doncic’s house for additional rounds of bowling since their initial playdate — not a small gesture, or typical. (Consider Derek Fisher famously told GQ in 2010 that he’d never been to Kobe Bryant’s house in the nearly 15 years since joining the Lakers together as rookies in 1996.) And they used another recent off night to sit courtside for a South Bay Lakers game to cheer on Thiero and some of their other younger teammates.

“We act like we’re probably 10-year old best friends,” Reaves said. “You have a deeper care for one another than just basketball. And then that bleeds into basketball, because you don’t want to let that person down. … You don’t want to not give it your all.”

Doncic said: “We kind of understand each other — what the other is going to do. So I would say it’s a little bit natural.”

Still, whenever earnestness begins to creep in, they’re just as quick to revert back.

“I tell him all the time, I’m like, ‘Yo, you got to grow up,'” Reaves said. “And he’s like, ‘The day I grow up, fight me, because I never want to grow up.’

“I was like, ‘I love that.'”