Dalton Knecht’s audition was supposed to run through Halloween. “If he wants to rewrite that ending, the audition runs through Halloween — and it’s a defensive one,” this site argued on Sept. 14, pinning the stakes to a date: the Los Angeles Lakers had until Oct. 31 to decide whether to keep him under contract next season at roughly $6.4 million, a figure and a deadline the piece credited to analyst Trevor Lane.
That Oct. 31 date has now come and gone, and the audition never happened. The Lakers waived Knecht on Oct. 19 — twelve days early. ESPN’s game log credits him with no regular-season appearances this season, for the Lakers or for the New York Knicks, who signed him four days later, through New York’s Oct. 30 game at Philadelphia. His last competitive game was a Lakers preseason loss to the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 16.
The Roster Count Decided This, Not the Option
The Oct. 31 date was never the binding one. The Lakers carried 16 guaranteed contracts into a season that allows 15, and that arithmetic came due on Oct. 19. The $6.4 million option was never a decision the front office had to make; waiving him made it moot.
The Sept. 14 piece got the direction right and the floor wrong. It predicted “no trade materializes, the option gets declined, and Knecht plays out a contract year on the fringe.” The trade did die — Milwaukee wanted two second-round picks for Jericho Sims and the Lakers offered one, per Jake Fischer of The Stein Line. But Knecht is not playing out a contract year on the Lakers’ fringe. He is on a two-way contract with an assignment to a G League team.
Forty-Eight Preseason Minutes Say the Shot Went First
The framing needs a correction too. Knecht’s problem was supposed to be defense. Across four Lakers preseason games — 48 minutes, through Oct. 16 — he shot 3 of 12 from the field and 1 of 7 from three, and scored 11 points.
All 11 came in one game, 22 minutes at Golden State on Oct. 6. In the other three he played 26 minutes and did not score. That is a four-game preseason sample and should be read as one, but a team weighing whether to keep a player for his shooting had 48 minutes of evidence pointing the other way.
The New York Knicks Signed Him to Play in Westchester
New York signed Knecht to a two-way deal on Oct. 23 — his agents at Excel Sports Management told ESPN’s Shams Charania — and waived Kevin McCullar Jr. to open the slot, as HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto first reported. Coach Mike Brown was immediately specific about the plan: “the plan initially is to have [him] in Westchester playing games with the Knicks’ G League team,” Brown said, as relayed by ESPN’s Ian Begley.
Brown has not used him in the meantime. Knecht was a coach’s decision in New York’s Oct. 30 game at Philadelphia. The G League season does not tip off until Nov. 6, so the Westchester assignment does not produce a game for another week either.
A Shooter Priced as a Defender
The Sept. 14 piece treated Knecht’s Lakers future as a judgment call with an October date attached. It was arithmetic with an earlier one, and the ten days of regular-season auditioning that piece described were never on offer. The read underneath it survives, though, and the correction lands on Knecht rather than on the argument: a player drafted 17th in 2024 for his shooting has opened his third NBA season without a regular-season minute, on his second team, with a G League assignment waiting.
Sources: Shams Charania and Ian Begley of ESPN; Michael Scotto of HoopsHype; Jake Fischer of The Stein Line; ESPN box scores and player game logs; NBA G League.
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