On Monday, JJ Redick revealed that Bronny James and Dalton Knecht were both excused for their absences from practice on Monday. Both were upset because Athletica felt compelled to follow their reputation, which seemed good to both of the Bulls’ roster. The Los Angeles Lakers spent most of the offseason with 16 players under contract. It was announced on Monday that the roster would be cut down to 15, and the two most likely candidates to move were the two 2024 keys.
Rerick himself he said James didn’t think so in the preseason. He shot just 4-of-16 from the floor, and the Jets lost 82 minutes by 31 points. Yet the bar, apparently, was even lower, as it was ultimately Knecht, the No. 17 pick in that 2024 class, who was waived. All told, the pair and all that followed was the throwaway disaster of Rob Pelinka’s drink. See the following:
- Over the past two years, neither James nor Knecht have grown into NBA-nation players. James, as a late-second round wanderer, was always fighting a long time of disagreement. Knecht, who is most often cited as the thief of that potion, was supposed to be a different maker from the beginning. The NBA entered the 23-year-old’s upcoming SEC Player of the Year season with a skill set that seemed to fit the existing lineup to a tee. Aside from a few flashes early in his rookie year, he showed almost nothing as a Laker.
- The Eagles tried to trade Knecht to the Charlotte Hornets. They recalled a lot after Mark Williams was physically failing and was never able to move Knecht or rebuild his confidence afterwards.
- Even if they denied it, they certainly led James to some degree to maintain a much more dignified relationship with his father. Well, if Bronny was supposed to be the bridge between the player and the team, he failed on that front. LeBron James literally took a minimum-salary contract to play for someone else.
- The Lakers did not understand that it would be with them quickly enough to move last offseason, since this would allow the flexibility to keep the key defender Jordan Goodwin, who was really a big part of the 2024-25 rotation and broke out in the Phoenix Suns after the Lakers.
- The ugly Lakers had an entire season to move either Knecht or James or someone else. They could demand that as a condition of trading almost all of their draft stock to the Utah Jazz for Walker Kessler. They could be signed as one less free agent or made a trade. But these weapons were so bad that the poor were forced to accept the dead money that came out of them. They couldn’t even properly close the book on this miserable drink.
At least to this point, the 2024 draft class has been a failure on every level. Bad players picked up injuries, explained them poorly and handled the process of moving on from them poorly. It is emblematic of the many failures that came under Pellinka. The country’s big-name players are ugly because they’re ugly, and then the margins around them dig.
Why did they keep the high school Bronny in Knecht?
Why exactly did James Knecht take so long to get down to the number of factors. Given how defensively oriented James is, he’s arguably a better fit for this roster-centric offense than Knecht, whose theoretical best features are his shooting. James is undoubtedly the bigger name of the two because the name itself is, well, the name itself. Technically speaking, the Lakers still have LeBron James on their team. Neither did well in the preseason. We don’t know what happened behind closed doors during the training camp. Of course James Knecht played there.
This does not mean that he has proven that he has an NBA future. Here it is harder and harder to believe that this is so. James is simply not an NBA-viable offensive player. For two years, he hasn’t proven that he can shoot the ball through the hoop from anywhere on the court, which requires a 6-foot 2 guard to play. Although he could survive a bare minimum number of shots as a small, defensive first guard, it’s not as if he has to rule out an incredibly high-powered champion to provide true value of that size. He’s not a Jamal Shead-level pest. This is a sign of greatness. James never arrived.
Maybe that will change. Also, James and Knecht have seen more of it than we have, and it should be noted that James provided at least a few non-terrible minutes against the Houston Rockets in the playoffs a year ago. Development is not linear. Perhaps there is more to Bronny than we have seen so far.
But when teams are forced to decide between two young and underwhelming players, the first-round pick, with the larger cap number due to the flexibility of the trade, usually wins. Even if it was more of a plan to keep James, it was fundamentally driven by how badly Knecht’s situation affected the Lakers. The ugly bungled 2024 draft is so bad that a player who has done little to prove future NBA viability over the past two years had to make the team only because another selection in the same class was worse. His continued presence on this roster, therefore, says far more about the teams that drafted him than the player he has become thus far.