Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht, who fought his way from junior college to the Big Sky Conference and then the SEC, was still there at pick No. 17.
EL SEGUNDO — And with the 17th pick in the NBA draft, the Lakers selected …
… an overachieving gym rat. And that’s not a bad thing, at all.
Dalton Knecht was a consensus first-team All-American in 2023-24 at Tennessee, the Southeastern Conference’s Player of the Year, runner-up for the Associated Press national player of the year award and in the running for a bunch of other national honors.
He was a 45% shooter overall and a 39% 3-point shooter for the Vols, and you can be sure that new coach JJ Redick – who you would imagine would have an affinity for such snipers, having been one himself – is already tinkering with ways to get him open shots.
But that’s only part of the story. Knecht, 23, is also a guy who had no Division I offers out of Prairie View High School in Henderson, Colorado, thanks in part to a late growth spurt (he’s now 6-foot-6). He played at Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado, for two years, transferred to Northern Colorado and led the Big Sky Conference in scoring as a senior, and transferred to Tennessee for his final season of eligibility and was fourth in the SEC at 21.7 points per game.
In other words, he fought his way through the system to get to this point. That is a sign of the type of mental toughness that any coach or executive would treasure.
“A gym rat,” Lakers executive vice president Rob Pelinka said Wednesday night. “We studied him hard, and this kid lives in the gym. I think to be an elite shooter and to be an elite movement shooter, the only way to get there is with constant reps. And when we did our intel and study on him at every level, he’s the guy that’s in the gym the most. And I think that will be our expectations here.”
He’s shown he’ll put in the work. And if he didn’t already have a chip on his shoulder, and the need to prove people wrong, draft night only added to it. Knecht was projected by most mock drafts to go between the sixth and 10th picks, and slipping to 17 was to the Lakers’ advantage on two fronts. They got the man they didn’t expect to get – they really, really liked him but couldn’t get him into the building for a pre-draft workout – and he’ll arrive with, again, something to prove.
“I think already you can just feel that mentality of, ‘Okay, some of these teams passed on me. I’m going to show them they were wrong,’” Pelinka said. “You can just get that sense from him, just his aura, his vibe.
“I think when you have the superstars on your team, then you need to get guys who are willing to be a star in their role. And he does some really, really important things in those aspects to help the the great, great superstars do what they’re able to do. I can just see him on the court now, just the way LeBron (James) makes reads and Anthony Davis commands double-teams and you have a shooting weapon like that on the opposite side. I think you can already see the potential there.”
Chip on the shoulder? Absolutely. Knecht, speaking to reporters at the draft in Brooklyn, said it himself.
“Every time I touch a basketball or walk into a gym, I always feel like I got something to prove,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter where I’m at, it’s always going to be there and I’ll have that chip on my shoulder for feeling like I’ve been underrated my whole life. So it’s going to be something that I’ll carry with me for the rest of my career.”
Imagine the tension upstairs in the Lakers’ facility as Knecht kept slipping, and players from France and Serbia and the G-League’s Ignite developmental team – which was shut down at the end of this past season – heard their names called.
“You know, it’s interesting,” Pelinka said. “We usually rank our board, and we’ll take guys off when they get drafted. And like I said, we have him ranked very high. And all of us, we’re looking around the room saying, ‘There’s no way he’s going to still be there.’
“So, you know, it’s like the 11th pick gets called (Matas Buzelis of Ignite to Chicago) and then you say, well, there’s no way they’re (Oklahoma City) not going to take him at 12. (They took Nicola Topic of Serbia). And then no way they’re (Sacramento) not going to take him at 13. (They picked Devin Carter of Providence).
“And then the anticipation kind of mounts. And of course with that the anxiety kicks in and then you’re like, hold your breath. And when Philadelphia made the pick and chose another great player (Duke and former Corona Centennial High guard Jared McCain), we couldn’t believe they didn’t say his name. And, we got to say it instead when we made our pick.”
And there is this: Knecht picked Tennessee because he wanted to be coached hard and wanted to improve. And during the course of the season, Vols coach Rick Barnes would sit down with Knecht and break down film of a former great NBA shooter.
It was, of course, JJ Redick. Don’t these things seem preordained sometimes?
jalexander@scng.com
