The Los Angeles Lakers did not go with Bronny James in the first round of the 2024 NBA Draft. Instead, they went with someone with more experience and a proven scorer at the college level in the form of Tennessee Volunteers product Dalton Knecht, who is widely considered a hundred percent bucket-getter.
CJ McCollum raves about Los Angeles Lakers’ 2024 NBA Draft first-round pick
If you ask New Orleans Pelicans shooting guard CJ McCollum, Knecht is going to turn heads right away in the 2024-25 NBA season.
“I think Dalton’s going to have the biggest impact in year one,” McCollum said Thursday morning during an appearance on First Take.
.@CJMcCollum says Dalton Knecht will "have the biggest impact in year one" with the Lakers 👀 pic.twitter.com/x382dM0BYW
— First Take (@FirstTake) June 27, 2024
“I think the addition of JJ Redick to that staff, he was already drawing up ATOs and pindowns. Who better to mold Dalton than arguably one of the best off-ball movement shooters of all time? He’s aggressive, he’s athletic, he’s confident, he’s going to be able to play off the ball. LeBron [James] and AD [Anthony Davis] are going to have so much gravity. It is going to open things for him, Austin Reaves, and D-Lo [D’Angelo Russell] – if D-Lo’s coming back.”
As mentioned, Knecht knows how to score. Last season, he put up 21.7 points on 45.8 percent shooting from the floor and 39.7 percent shooting from the 3-point area. He also has good size at 6-6 plus he does come across as someone who’s not going to have much of a hard time adjusting in the pros, relatively speaking, as he is already 23 years old.
The Lakers feel like they got lucky that Knecht was still there for them to take at No. 17, with many believing that he should have been taken off the board earlier.
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