Eating $4.2 million in guaranteed salary on a 25-year-old former first-round shooter while keeping a 6-foot-2 guard who shot 25 percent in the preseason is an act of organizational malpractice. On Monday afternoon, the Los Angeles Lakers trimmed their roster from 16 standard contracts to the league maximum of 15 by waiving Dalton Knecht, the No. 17 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft. Meanwhile, Bronny James, the No. 55 overall pick in that exact same draft class, kept his locker for Wednesday night’s season opener against the Golden State Warriors.
The franchise does not even have the excuse of keeping the superstar father happy anymore, because LeBron James left Los Angeles in free agency for the Philadelphia 76ers before this season even started. Yet my eyes are staring at a transaction sheet where a 6-foot-6 wing who once dropped 37 points and nine three-pointers against the Utah Jazz gets shown the exit door for nothing.
Look closely at the explanation head coach JJ Redick offered before last week’s preseason finale against the Denver Nuggets when asked why Knecht lost his momentum.
“I think the biggest thing is the team changed,” Redick said. “The team changed. The needs changed, the fit changed. I think he got better as a player over the last two years. I think each guy has, particularly last year, each guy got plenty of opportunities with the amount of injuries we had. So, I just think coming into this year, we added a lot of wings and he’s in a tough spot right now.”
Read those words from Redick again and try to square them with the actual basketball transaction that followed on Monday. If a 6-foot-6 movement shooter got better as a player over the last two seasons, a competent front office does not dump him onto the waiver wire and void his $6.45 million team option for 2027-28 while absorbing $4.2 million in dead cap money.
The Rescinded Trade That Ruined A First-Round Asset
I know how the Lakers front office and Redick’s staff will defend this decision on the merits. They will point to the crowded wing rotation and argue that Knecht played himself off the roster by averaging 4.2 points in 10.2 minutes across 54 games last season before shooting 3-of-12 from the floor and 14.3 percent from three across four preseason games this month.
That argument completely ignores how the Lakers broke their own player’s confidence and tanked his trade value in the first place. During a nine-game stretch in November 2024, Knecht looked like one of the steals of his draft class, averaging 18.9 points on 55.4 percent shooting and 52.2 percent from beyond the arc. Then came February 2025, when the front office shipped Knecht, Cam Reddish, a 2031 unprotected first-round pick, and a 2030 pick swap to the Charlotte Hornets for center Mark Williams… only for the trade to be rescinded when Williams failed his physical.
Sending a rookie packing and then dragging him back into the building when the medicals fail requires delicate management, and the Lakers botched every step of his reintegration. His playing time got slashed nearly in half from 19.2 minutes a night as a rookie to 10.2 minutes in his second year. When reporters asked Redick last week about Knecht’s confidence and body language, the coach washed his hands of the whole situation.
“You’d have to ask him that,” Redick said. “I’m not a great psychologist, although sometimes with my children I have to be. But with players, they’re all enigmas to me. All of them. So you’ll have to ask him that.”
My job as a father requires reading the room when my kids are struggling, and an NBA head coach gets paid millions of dollars to understand what makes his roster tick. Calling every single player on your team an enigma when a first-round pick loses his rhythm after a botched trade is a stunning admission of coaching detachment. By the time Monday’s deadline arrived, the Lakers needed to clear a roster spot, and exploratory 2-for-1 trade talks for a big man… including a push involving second-round draft capital for Milwaukee’s Jericho Sims… went nowhere.
The Roster Math Behind The 15th Spot
Even if you accept that Knecht needed a fresh start elsewhere, keeping Bronny James over a 6-foot-6 perimeter spacer violates basic NBA roster construction. Look at the numbers across two full seasons in the league: Bronny has averaged 2.7 points, 0.6 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in 8.1 minutes across 69 career games. In five preseason appearances this month, Bronny shot 4-of-16 from the field, the exact same 25 percent clip that supposedly sealed Knecht’s fate, while averaging 2.2 points in 16.4 minutes per game, and the Lakers were outscored by 31 points during his 82 minutes on the court.
In modern NBA spacing, a 6-foot-6 wing with a respectable three-point stroke across two seasons provides gravity on weak-side pin-downs and forces help defenders to stay attached at the arc, even when his shot is cold. An undersized 6-foot-2 guard who cannot efficiently run second-unit pick-and-roll offense or finish over length shrinks the floor at both ends. Both Knecht and Bronny were excused from Monday’s practice with what Redick described as an illness, yet only the former first-round pick had his contract terminated before 5 p.m. Eastern.
I see a franchise that burned the No. 17 pick in 2024, mismanaged his development after a failed physical in 2025, and lit $4.2 million on fire in 2026 while clinging to the last remnant of an era that already moved to Philadelphia. When Dalton Knecht clears waivers, signs a two-way or minimum deal with a contender that actually runs off-ball screening actions for him, and starts burying catch-and-shoot threes on national television, the Lakers front office will have zero excuses left to hide behind.
