Nobody thought the question would be asked so late in the regular season. Or, really, at any time this year.

But where would the Lakers be without Austin Reaves?

He scored a career-high 35 points and continued to transition from fan favorite to vitally important player in the Lakers’ 111-105 victory Sunday over the Orlando Magic.

An undrafted rookie in 2021, Reaves heard “M-V-P, M-V-P!” chants from an appreciative Crypto.com Arena crowd while helping keep alive the Lakers’ push for a playoff berth.

He scored 10 points in the final 1:33 to push the Lakers (35-37) into a tie with Minnesota and Oklahoma City for ninth place in the Western Conference.

In a sign of the slippery-slope nature of the West, the Lakers would have fallen to 12th had they lost. It wasn’t going to happen with Reaves on the court.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Austin Reaves Show,” Spectrum SportsNet analyst James Worthy said at the start of the Lakers’ post-game show. Who could argue with him?

Reaves made nine of 14 shots and was an impressive 16 of 18 from the free-throw line, adding six rebounds and six assists in only 30 minutes off the bench.

Teammates Dennis Schroder and Malik Beasley hit Reaves with a celebratory water-bottle shower while he was giving a post-game interview on the court. Another teammate, Wenyen Gabriel, also briefly interrupted the interview by exclaiming, “The man of the day…MVP!”

The importance of the offensive outburst, not to mention the chants typically reserved for Kobe Bryant and LeBron James over the decades, wasn’t lost on Reaves.

“It’s special,” he told Spectrum SportsNet. “I play the game with the type of mindset to go leave it on the court every night. For them to appreciate what I do every night means a lot. It’s all love.”

With the score tied at 101-101, Reaves began his late-game spree by drawing a foul while shooting a three-pointer just before the shot clock expired with 1:33 to play. He made two of the three free throws.

Then he added a pull-up jumper to put the Lakers up by two. After the Magic had trouble scoring on the rest of its crunch-time possessions, Reaves sunk a slew of free throws when Orlando was forced to foul.

“We needed all of them tonight,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “His aggressiveness is reflected in his free-throw attempts. He’s been that way all year.”

Reaves scored 16 points in the first half and the Lakers led, 59-49, after outscoring Orlando by 21 points from three-point range, a stirring turnaround from recent Lakers games.

D’Angelo Russell’s two-game shooting slump lifted Sunday as he scored 18 points and made four of eight from three-point range.

The Lakers’ bench totaled 61 points on a night where starter Anthony Davis was relatively quiet with 15 points and 11 rebounds.

In addition to Reaves, reserves Dennis Schroder (12 points), Rui Hachimura (eight points) and Gabriel (six points and eight rebounds) all contributed.

Even though Orlando was mired in 13th place in the East, the Magic had good, young players (Paolo Banchero, anyone?) and defeated the Clippers the previous day.

Orlando’s problem was shooting — the Magic (29-43) had trouble connecting from deep, in particular Franz Wagner, who missed all eight of his three-point attempts but still scored 21 points. Banchero also scored 21.

The night, however, belonged to the 24-year-old who initially joined the Lakers as a summer-league invite before eventually signing a two-year contract with them.

“Every win from here on out is crucial, and every game is crucial,” Reaves said. “If we’re locked in… I feel like we’ve got the personnel and the firepower to be one of the best teams in the league.”