Almost 11 months ago to the date, Dalton Knecht was in his worst slump of the season. The jump from the Big Sky Conference to the SEC had been going great, the points were pouring in, a faucet that couldn’t be stopped.
And then — trouble.
He went two for seven against Georgia State, one for seven against North Carolina State and two for seven again, this time against Tarleton State. Before he was the SEC’s player of the year, before he was the Lakers’ pick at No. 17 and before he was looking like the shooting answer the Lakers have never quite been able to put around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Knecht was just a fifth-year senior in one hell of a slump.
“DK, what’s good my man? Just wanted to reach out and say what’s up?” Austin Reaves direct messaged Knecht on Dec. 23. “… Make sure we stay tapped in man. I’ll be watching, and if you ever need anything let me know. I’m around.”
Tuesday night, after Knecht scored 37 points — the most of his young NBA career — the Lakers rookie again mentioned that message from Reaves as being important to him. It’s the kind of thing you think about after a big night when you’re looking more and more comfortable in the NBA.
“Austin, like I’ve said before multiple times, he texted me throughout my time at Tennessee. So having him there, I ask him any questions. He’s always there to help me out,” Knecht said. “Me and him shoot after practice ends every single day. And you have a guy like that that’s been in the league and does stuff like this, like what I did [tonight], when I have a guy like that that stays confident in me, always wants me to shoot the ball, it’s always good.”
Fourteen games into the year, these kinds of nights are starting to stack up for Knecht, who somehow was available to the Lakers at the No. 17 draft pick.
Tuesday’s show was the best yet, with Knecht even doing the same shrugged shoulder celebration after his barrage of threes that Michael Jordan used in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals.
“I’m signed to Jordan brand,” he said. “Had to.”
It all felt new because, for Knecht as a pro, it was. He’s one of just four rookies ever to make nine threes in a game. He scored 21 points in the third quarter after coming up with huge barrages last week in New Orleans and against Memphis. But for players like Reaves, it all felt familiar.
“If you watched him in college, you know what he’s capable of,” Reaves said after the Lakers’ 124-118 win against Utah. “And when he sees a couple of his first shots go in, he can get in that mode where he’s unconscious. I kinda expect it from him because I’ve watched him a lot.”
He’s not the only one.
James, who mentioned Knecht in an interview last season after he scored 37 points in a loss to Purdue in the NCAA tournament, said he was shocked the Lakers were able to pick him more than midway through the first round.
This, he said, wasn’t the Lakers unearthing some gem. This, he said using a variety of R-rated language, was a team simply accepting the gift handed to them.
“Did anybody watch him?” James said before four-lettering a couple times in disbelief. “…You don’t ‘find’ an SEC player of the year.”
The Lakers, though, have been looking for a player like Knecht, at least in a role-filling sense. They’ve run through a litany of shooters designed to give Davis and James more space around the basket, to pull defenses out of the paint and toward the three-point line.
Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were effective spacers. Troy Daniels, Wesley Matthews, Ben McLemore, Wayne Ellington, Trevor Ariza, Kent Bazemore, Malik Beasley and Patrick Beverley weren’t good enough to consistently draw defenders.
But Knecht? The sense is he’s already established that kind of respect (even if Utah’s defenders kept losing him in the third quarter when he made all six of his three-point shots).
“You can’t leave him,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of sets that we can run and things that we can run … either to get him a shot or make guys think that he’s coming up in the shot. And now that kind of messes up their defensive rotation. But that always helps when you got shooters around. Me and Bron play in the post. Now you get that one on one. It’s hard to double-team.”
And the Lakers are going to keep giving him chances, even if Rui Hachimura is set to return from an ankle injury sometime this week. Knecht does too much stuff for the team on offense over the past week, a stretch where he’s made more than 66% of his three-point attempts. Over the last four games, Knecht’s averaging 24.3 points while leading the Lakers with a 9.3 plus-minus rating.
And considering JJ Redick is sort of living vicariously through his rookie every time he grabs the white board and draws up a play to run him off a bunch of screens, the shots are going to keep on coming.
“It’s fun. I have to be cognizant sometimes when I get really excited when I see an [after timeout play] or I have an idea, to not have them all drawn up for Dalton,” Redick said with a grin. “That’s just, that’s reality. I want them all for me.”
All of it represents some level of communal success for the Lakers. Before Knecht could make these shots, the team had to pick him. Before that even, belief from players like Reaves helped make him more confident.
Tuesday, passes and screens from D’Angelo Russell, assists from James and defensive stops from Cam Reddish and Gabe Vincent all played a role in Knecht getting (and then hitting) great looks.
“Recognizing the hot hand, which is a real thing, but recognizing the hot hand and then executing just shows a level of selflessness,” Redick said. “It also shows a level of basketball IQ. And I thought our guys were great with that”
