Despite limited play and more excitement about his potential than his production, Max Christie feels he had a strong 2023-24 season.
Max Christie is the latest baby Laker who found himself at a crossroads this summer. As a restricted free agent, would he get another offer elsewhere? Would the Lakers match any offer, or did he finish his time in Los Angeles?
We quickly got Christie's answer, with him and the Lakers agreeing to a four-year, $32 million deal. With contract talks over, Christie has gotten back on the grind and even worked out with JJ Redick in Las Vegas during Summer League.
The young Lakers wing talked about his perspective on how the 2023-24 season went for him in an interview with Jovan Buha of The Athletic on his latest podcast episode.
“I guess if you want to look at the numbers, I think I had a pretty good season overall. I think I improved my 3-point percentage and then if you look at the two years combined, I think, overall, from a numbers standpoint, it was solid. Yeah, you could say I didn’t play as much as I would have liked, I didn’t play as much as I thought I could of but at the end of the day, that’s out of my control and I’ve harped on this for the past two years…but I thought I did a really good job all year long of controlling what I could control which was my attitude, my work ethic, being a great teammate. And then even when I did get out there, just trying to play as hard as I can and help the team.
I did a lot of work behind the scenes. I wanted to do a lot of extra work and still trying to help out the team even from trying to ask to be on the scout team to get as many reps as I can instead of kind of just sitting and watching, I was trying to do everything I could just to get reps. Overall, I think it was a really good season for me. It was a huge growth for me. I hit a lot of adversity in terms of not playing and what not, but still, I think I got better even though I wasn’t getting a lot of live-game minutes and so, to me, that’s a successful season.”
Christie is correct that his numbers rose from his first year to his second, even if the progression was modest. He went from a 41% 3-point shooter to 42%, played in 67 games compared to 41 his rookie campaign and had better averages in scoring, rebounding, steals and assists.
For a player who is just 21 years young, it's amazing to see that he has such a positive and patient perspective on things. It would be so easy to get frustrated with his limited role and either become negative and bitter or even push for a move to some lousy Eastern Conference team where he would easily get 20-plus minutes each game.
Instead Christie made it clear that he wanted to come back and seems primed for a big season.
Now it's up to him to do the work and Redick to develop him and prove that he's closer to being the next Austin Reaves than the next Talen Horton-Tucker for the Lakers.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.
