When is the right time to trade someone? In Dalton Knecht's case, it would have been at any point when he had a lick of value. Instead, Rob Pelinka held on too long and the Los Angeles Lakers were forced to release him for absolutely nothing.
Shams Charania and a bunch of NBA insiders took to Twitter/X to announce that on roster finalization day, the Lakers admitted defeat on the Knecht front and opted to simply eat his cap hit for the 2026-27 season to get the roster down to 15. There is really no way to excuse this one for Pelinka.
Missing on the player in the NBA Draft was one thing. Missing on when to call it quits is a whole different infraction that looks just as bad, if not worse, at this stage of the process.
Lakers kept Dalton Knecht for too long and accepted the worst-case scenario
Let us walk through the several stages of when Knecht could have been traded.
Right after the failed Mark Williams trade was a no-go. That one was done at the trade deadline buzzer and there was no room to pivot when it fell through. Fair enough.
The Lakers get to the offseason after that, and Knecht sticks around in Los Angeles in spite of everything. Huh. Things officially started to get weird then. Perhaps Pelinka was not going to get a first-rounder back for DK at that point, but there might have still been a path to at least regain some form of draft capital for their 2024 pick.
Instead, Knecht remained in Los Angeles. It was an odd choice considering there was no real path back to the rotation for him. That would have been what was necessary to rebuild his trade value. However, the former first-round pick did not manage to earn a permanent exit from JJ Redick's doghouse. That much was on the player, but Pelinka should have understood what was happening.
Did the Lakers cut their losses at the 2026 NBA trade deadline? No. They stood pat with the guy who was not getting minutes and had no way of becoming an impactful contributor for the team once more.
That got the situation to the 2026 offseason. The Lakers tried shopping Knecht alongside Jarred Vanderbilt throughout the summer. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers for that combination of players. It has led us to where we are today.
The Lakers ultimately just chose to eat the short-term salary hit against their cap books. What other options were left when no good trades materialized for the guy whose value had become brutal?
Was this all preventable? Certainly. Alas, Pelinka absolutely mismanaged the situation here, and that is a loss the Lakers are forced to eat in the process.
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