freakin' dantoni. that guy... anyway, dantoni would be playing knecht at pf and knecht would be averaging 25 (whilst giving up 35).
Can Dalton Knecht be the player the Lakers need? ‘He has to figure out who he is’ Dalton Knecht had an up-and-down rookie season, which included a midseason trade that was later rescinded. Dan Woike Dan Woike Oct. 8, 2025 Updated 2:30 pm PDT SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — The ball pinged from Dalton Knecht to Gabe Vincent to Jaxson Hayes back to an open Knecht, and the Los Angeles Lakers’ second-year wing stepped into a shot and drilled a 3-pointer. Later in the first half of Sunday’s preseason game against the Golden State Warriors, Knecht ran to the left corner and relocated to an open space right in front of his coach before swishing in a 3. Offensively, this is what the Lakers want from Knecht. These plays, though, are not the ones NBA scouts are paying attention to. Instead, it’s moments like this one in the first quarter, when Knecht picked up Stephen Curry in transition. As Curry passed the ball to the corner to Al Horford, Knecht’s attention disappeared for a moment. And after that single glance in the wrong direction, Curry cut into the paint and scored before hitting a two-finger gun celebration directly into the baseline camera. It’s moments when Knecht is late to help and out of position off the ball on defense, the ones where he fails to function within the Lakers’ team defense, that have NBA scouts’ attention. As a go-to scorer at Tennessee, Knecht became a shoe-in first-round pick, an unstoppable offensive force and inarguably one of the best players in the country. But that was a different level, a different team and a different time. To play in the NBA, to be wanted and to be counted on, Knecht has to show more than a couple of swished jumpers. “He has to figure out who he is at this level,” one talent evaluator, who like others in this story was granted anonymity so they could speak freely, told The Athletic. The clock is ticking on Knecht to figure some of this out. The preseason still is the cleanest opportunity for him to be showcased, with the additions of Jake LaRavia, Marcus Smart and a healthier Jarred Vanderbilt crowding things on the wing. Once the Lakers’ season begins, there are no guarantees he’ll be in coach JJ Redick’s rotation if the team is at full strength. Knecht has lived an NBA lifetime since he was drafted 17th overall in 2024. He’s gone from top-20 pick to a sensation whose jersey was on sale next to LeBron James’ inside of sporting goods stores to a horrible early-season slump. Just as he regained some footing, he found himself traded to the Charlotte Hornets with an unprotected first-round pick for center Mark Williams. Of course, the trade was rescinded, and Knecht returned to a team that had proven it was ready to move on. And despite some flashes since, he’s never really recaptured that early-season magic. Whether or not Knecht will be able to adapt in the way the Lakers need him to is one of the more important stories this season, for what it means for the Lakers’ roster now and for the moves it could open for them down the road. Heading into the summer, Knecht represented the Lakers’ best in-house tradable piece, minus Austin Reaves. Knecht was, after all, just one of four rookies last season to score at least 25 points in a game four times, along with Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle, No. 1 pick Zacccharie Risacher and Philadelphia 76ers guard Jared McCain. But even as Knecht was scoring, scouts around the NBA couldn’t ignore the holes in his game, particularly on the defensive end, where he was often out of position. Concerns about his ability to handle those concepts — one of the reasons he was available to the Lakers at No. 17 in the draft — were reaffirmed in the eyes of NBA evaluators. Summer league was his first chance to address some of those issues, but Knecht mostly struggled. At the time, word was that Knecht had lost his legs due to aggressive workouts after his rookie season ended with him playing less than four minutes in his first NBA postseason. Talking about Knecht before training camp, Redick said the same. “I really believe this, the guy did too much after the season, and I think in summer league, he was burnt out,” Redick said. “He was coming in here at 5 a.m. getting shots up, then doing two workouts with our summer-league staff and in the weight room.” Dalton Knecht was one of the top scorers in the NCAA at Tennessee.Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Imagn Images Having already been traded once, Knecht’s availability wasn’t considered a real secret in Las Vegas during summer league. The Lakers desperately need a player whom teams desire close to as much as they desired the team’s lone tradable first-round pick. But scouts and executives, almost unanimously, felt that the Lakers wouldn’t be able to recoup comparable value to the No. 17 pick they used when they selected Knecht. Some felt the team might be able to get its hands on multiple second-round picks, while the most critical felt Knecht would return just a lone second. The Lakers didn’t move Knecht this summer, with anything the team possibly able to get for Knecht not worth giving up on the potential that’s still there. But after a rough preseason debut where he shot 1 of 12, scouts left Palm Desert as pessimistic as ever, one even calling Knecht a “negative asset,” meaning the Lakers would need to attach pieces to incentivize a team in a trade. He was 3-of-11 on Sunday but showed some growth playmaking — a lob pass to Hayes being the most obviously positive sign for Knecht’s growing awareness. And the shooting stroke still has a lot of fans even as he’s opened the preseason making only 5 of 21 in the Lakers’ first two games. “He did exactly what he can do — catch and shoot,” one Eastern Conference executive said. “He wasn’t great, but he didn’t look so lost.” But it’s clear in conversations around the Lakers that Knecht’s opportunities aren’t going to be tied to his offense. “We probably met three times over the summer, met again in September, like it’s clear what he’s supposed to do. He also has Beau Levesque as his player development coach. So trust me, it’s clear, right? I thought he was OK (Friday),” Redick said before Sunday’s game in San Francisco. “Those three practices, our video room and our analytics guys, they tracked every stat in live play. He had an unbelievable three days offensively. I’m very confident (that) when he’s confident, he’s a high-level offensive player in the NBA. “It’s the other stuff that he’s got to just do and find that consistency in his defense, on being the low man, or boxing out, or crashing every time or sprinting back and actually talking in transition. When he’s doing those things, he’s an impact player.” While Knecht said he didn’t think his confidence offensively has been affected by the mistakes on the other end of the floor — “if you make a mistake, you just go make it up,” he said — it’d be natural to wonder if it’s bothering him. “I don’t think this is just a Dalton thing. This is every player,” Redick said. “There could be a snowball effect to one mistake or one bad play or a couple missed shots. There’s a snowball effect that I think can have your confidence teeter, but I think that’s nearly everybody.” Rui Hachimura, like Knecht, a former NCAA All-American, said players have to be assertive in finding the right niche. “You got to change your mindset,” Hachimura said after practice Tuesday. “You got to find your role of how you can fit on a team. They’re not really going to tell you what to do. You kind of got to see, ‘What do you need on this team?’” That ability, to learn how to matter when you’re not the one who matters most, has eluded a lot of college basketball’s best players. It’s kept former NBA All-Stars from thriving as role players and knocked veterans out of the league when the rhythm they needed just wasn’t available often enough. Admittedly more of a scorer than a shooter and a player who needs to feel in rhythm, the touches and shots should only decrease as the Lakers’ stars return to the court. And while Knecht said he’s learning a lot watching, beginning with analyzing plays last season with Markieff Morris and continuing this year with Smart, people around the league need to see more of the doing. Because for the Lakers, this cuts both ways. If he learns, Knecht can be a valued piece of the team’s rotation, a young player with size, athleticism and sweet shooting touch with the physicality to compete on the defensive end. That kind of player would be valued in the locker room as much as they would be in hypothetical trade calls. But if the same concerns persist, the path forward is harder to chart. It seems unlikely that Knecht will be the offensive focal point as he was in college, when he dominated offensively and was a consensus All-American. Here, he’s going to have to learn how to do less on that side of the ball while doing more on the other. Situation and opportunity in the NBA are everything for all but a select few, and it’s still unknown whether either is totally right for Knecht. For him to matter — either on the Lakers’ roster or as someone whom other teams value as part of theirs — he’s going to have to figure some things out.
