Austin Reaves is one of the NBA’s most impressive young players. Unfortunately, on his rise to stardom, he has had to deal with a lot of adversity.

Just last season, his own head coach purposely sabotaged Reaves in multiple ways.

Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark is currently one of the WNBA’s brightest stars. Unfortunately, she has had to deal with racism akin to the kind Jackie Robinson once faced.

This week Reaves decided to give Clark some advice, from one white basketball star to another.

“I think you preach to just stick with it,” Reaves told Lakers Nation. “Every rookie coming into professional sports, you have growing pains where you go through the physicality change from the college to the pros. I think the way teams are guarding her and showing her a lot of attention is just a respect to what she can do on the court.”

Reaves didn’t stop there, though.

“So I don’t think anyone should take it as anything different and I’m sure she’s not,” he continued.

“I’m sure she’s watching film, doing everything she can do to get better every single game. But I’m sure it’s more of a respect thing and I’d tell her that, that if there girls didn’t see her to be the player that she is and think she is then they wouldn’t be physical with her and trying to get after her to see how good she is…

“You just tell her to stick with it because like I said, every rookie in any sport you play goes through growing pains. I’m going into year four and I’m still going through growing pains, still learning the game every single day. So just tell her to stick with it.”

Will Clark ultimately heed Reaves’ advice? Time will tell.