3 ways Lakers superfan was way off with embarrassing Rockets claim

1. The Rockets didn't want Austin Reaves

Although the Rockets had been linked to Austin Reaves, that doesn't exactly mean that they were interested in him. For example, the Rockets were linked to Kyrie Irving and Kyle Kuzma, and it was clear that they weren't legitimately interested in signing them.

The Rockets were even linked to Nikola Vucevic and they were obviously not going to sign him. The Rockets were being used by agents as leverage to get their respective teams to offer more money because it was known that they had the most cap space in the league (a projected $66 million), so they were linked to a lot of players.

To be clear, this wasn't the case with Reaves, it's just important to note that just because the team was linked to a player doesn't mean they were legitimately a threat to sign said player. The Rockets viewed Reaves as a fall-back option, in the event that they weren't able to land their preferred targets, which were reportedly Fred VanVleet and James Harden, heading into free agency.

This means Reaves wasn't one of their top targets. And they certainly weren't going to tie up their cap space only to have the Lakers match the offer sheet in the end, although I thought that would've been fun, because it would have made the Lakers pay Reaves almost double the amount they paid him in the end. 

But the Rockets didn't want Reaves. They would've settled for him as an alternative, which isn't quite the same.

This fan was simply trying to make himself feel better about the Lakers retaining Hachimura and Reaves. And that's okay. You don't have to try to dunk on another franchise to hype up your own favorite franchise.

But in the end, he ultimately exposed himself by being flat out wrong on all fronts.