Former Vol and Lakers guard Dalton Knecht. Photo via @Lakers on X.
After sticking around in Los Angeles following a failed trade before the deadline last year, former Tennessee star Dalton Knecht looks to once again be involved in potential trade rumors.
Knecht is in the middle of his second year in the NBA, averaging 4.8 points, 1.6 rebounds, and 0.4 assists. He’s played in 36 games for the Lakers with one start, but has seen a decline in minutes this season compared to his rookie campaign. He’s only averaging 12.5 minutes per game, a fairly steep drop from his 19.2 minutes per game last season. Knecht’s role seems to be shaky at best with the Lakers, and it wouldn’t be too big a surprise to see Los Angeles try to deal him, again, this season.
While nothing is concrete yet, there have been some telling rumors that something could be brewing. According to Broderick Turner and Thuc Nhi Nguyen of the Los Angeles Times, Knecht “has been a player that NBA people say L.A. is willing to move in a trade, along with a second-round pick attached to him to make it work.”
Additionally, JoinOffside’s and Lakers insider Anthony Irwin posted to X on Wednesday that Knecht’s camp has requested a trade out of Los Angeles.
“This does not come as a surprise,” Irwin said in a video about Knecht’s reported request. “Dalton has completely fallen out of the rotation. They gave it a go after actually trading him last year and then rescinding that trade. They tried to give it a go and have him come back and see if they could reestablish that relationship. It has not gone well. He has been pretty visibly down in the dumps when he gets out there on the basketball court, especially for the parent team.”
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It’s a shame to see the tumultuous path that Knecht’s early career has been on. Prior to getting sent to the Charlotte Hornets last year, Knecht was averaging 9.4 points on 46.5% shooting in 20.7 minutes off the bench per game for the Lakers. It wasn’t jaw-dropping numbers, but he was still getting his feet wet. After the trade didn’t work out, Knecht was sent back to the team that had just traded him away 48 games into his rookie career. Business is business, but immediately returning to the team that had just traded you away is tough for such a new player.
Knecht hasn’t seen the court since the Lakers’ 110-93 win over Torno on Jan. 18. In the three games prior to that, he averaged just three minutes on the court per game. He was fairly consistently getting double-digit minutes through the early part of January, but has fallen out of the rotation in the last two weeks. He also spent one game with the Lakers’ G-League affiliate in December, where he put up 30 points with six three-pointers.
If the rumors are true, the next question is whether the Lakers may try to part ways with him in a standalone fashion or include him as a piece in a trade to bring a bigger star to Los Angeles. Prior to getting sent to Charlotte in a trade last season, Knecht was nearly involved in the trade that sent Anthony Davis to Dallas in return for megastar Luka Doncic. That, obviously, did not occur.
We’ll have to wait and see to figure out the Lakers’ next plan for Knecht, whether that be keeping him in Los Angeles or trading him away before the Feb. 5 deadline. But after sending him away to get Doncic some help with a big man last year, it seems fairly on the table that Los Angeles might be willing to do the same thing again this time around.
The Lakers selected Knecht with the 17th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft after a standout lone season at Tennessee.
Knecht turned in one of the best individual seasons in Tennessee basketball history in his one season in Knoxville. The Northern Colorado transfer averaged 21.7 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game. He was even better in SEC play where he averaged 25.5 points per game on 48% shooting from the field and 42% shooting from three-point range.