The biggest story of Tuesday night for the Los Angeles Lakers was not LeBron James but rookie guard Dalton Knecht, who dropped a big scoring performance against the Utah Jazz at crypto.com Arena.
One can only imagine how proud Los Angeles’ front office felt in seeing the former Tennessee Volunteers having a fantastic evening on offense. After all, Knecht’s recent scoring surge is making him look like the steal of the 2024 NBA draft. It can be recalled that Los Angeles picked Knecht 17th overall in this year’s draft.
But for LeBron James, the Lakers simply took advantage of the teams that drafted in front of LA ignoring Knecht (h/t Mike Chiari of Bleacher Report).
“They didn’t ‘find’ DK,” James said. “The other 16 teams f–ked it up. Did anybody watch him? S–t. They just didn’t f–k it up. You don’t ‘find’ a SEC player of the year.”
LeBron James, Lakers feel like they have a winner in Dalton Knecht
Knecht led the Lakers with 37 points against the Jazz. He connected 12 of his 16 attempts from the floor with five rebounds and a steal. He also made nine of his 12 attempts from the 3-point region. Meanwhile, James was not too shabby himself, as the four-time league Most Valuable Player produced 26 points and 12 assists while going 9-for-17 from the field.
At 23 years old, Knecht perhaps had many NBA teams backing away from drafting him because of his age as an incoming rookie. But the potential is certainly still high for Knecht, who has averaged 24.3 points in the last four Los Angeles games.
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