You hear the name Dalton Knecht and your mind immediately goes to the botched Mark Williams trade, right? It will not take long before someone goes out there and claims the Los Angeles Lakers ruined his career with that moment. That is not nearly as true as those people would like it to be.
The uncomfortable truth here is that Knecht has plenty of blame to shoulder for his shortcomings since the Lakers selected him 17th overall in the 2024 NBA Draft. Did the failed trade hurt? Of course. Is it the difference between Knecht having a successful decade-plus career versus being on the roster bubble like he is now? No.
Dalton Knecht failed the Lakers as much as they failed him, if not more
Knecht's selling point as a developing player was always his scoring ability. In particular, the Lakers wanted him to be a reliable shooter who could space the floor consistently off the ball. The former first-round pick never fully delivered on that.
When you cannot excel at the thing that is supposed to keep you on the floor, it is going to make your flaws stick out even more. That has definitely been true for Knecht.
The defensive issues are obvious. Knecht was never an elite isolation defender coming out of college, but there was at least an ability to function well within the team construct. That has eluded him at the NBA level.
A lot of those issues have looked like a basketball IQ problem. That has affected not just his defense, but his game as a whole. Lakers beat writer summarized it well during his AMA session on Lakers reddit.
Woike wrote: "The way one scout put it to me that's stuck with me - Knecht's on-court IQ isn't strong enough for him to just think the game and he's not instinctual enough to just go play freely."
Staying adaptable and being malleable are assets in every walk of life, not just the NBA. You have to be willing, ready, and capable of learning new things constantly because nothing ever stays the same. It just has not been evident that Knecht is capable of keeping up in that regard during his time in the league.
You can bring up the Williams trade until you are blue in the face, but the reality is the problems here have always been much deeper than that singular moment.
Even if the conversation does boil down to that blundered deal, there is sympathy for Knecht's situation, but there should still be accountability for not coming back and proving to the Lakers why they were wrong. Great players have made careers out of less.
By Oct. 19 at 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT, Knecht will know whether he has a spot on this year's version of the Lakers. If the answer is no, that is situation to stop pinning exclusively on the team's shoulders.
Add us as a preferred source on Google