The Los Angeles Lakers have made very few changes to their roster this summer. Eliminated in the first round of last year’s playoffs by the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles is returning a team very similar to that one.

This has been a controversial decision among many, as there are several Western Conference teams that project to be better than the Lakers next season. With LeBron James in the final stages of his NBA career, the Lakers certainly have to attempt to contend as long as he is on the roster.

While promoting the online gaming site Arena Plus, Reaves had a press conference where he addressed last year’s postseason loss to the Nuggets.

“I like where we’re at,” Reaves said of his team (h/t Los Angeles Lakers on SI). “I think that we have what we need to go compete for a championship. You look back at the Denver series last year, I forget the statistic, but I think we led for like 140 minutes to their like 38 minutes or something, and we get beat 4-1. Which you can’t really wrap your mind around, but it was just a couple sequences down the stretch that we didn’t execute and they executed. If we do, we’d beat them in that series and we’d go on and have an opportunity to play Minnesota. So I like where we’re at.”

This trend that Reaves explained is somewhat similar to LA’s 2023 Western Conference Finals loss to the Nuggets where they played the eventual champions close for most of the games before faltering late. If the Lakers can execute better in those crucial moments, perhaps they can be a better team next season without any major additions.