The Los Angeles Lakers selected Dalton Knecht with the 17th overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
It is impossible to know how a player will pan out before he takes the court, but so far everyone seems to universally believe that L.A. made the most of their position in the draft.
Lakers president Rob Pelinka was understandably thrilled to land a player of Knecht’s stature.
“We would have never imagined a player as skilled and perfect for our needs would be there [at 17],” he said in a session with the media on Wednesday.
Knecht is the reigning SEC Player of the Year and a guy most expected to go inside the top 10. And he didn’t have any weird headlines pop up just before the draft the way Donovan Clingan did with his girlfriend’s personal photos leaking out. Hence the Lakers’ jubilation.
After the pick was made, fans dug into Knecht’s social media activity a bit. Upon a thorough investigation, they couldn’t help but notice that he appears to be a fan of Los Angeles’ biggest current rival: the Denver Nuggets.
The Lakers and Nuggets have a lot of bad blood between them, so it is pretty ironic that the guy they just picked up is such a fan of them.
Will Knecht prove to be the missing piece that eventually helps the Lakers topple the Nuggets in the Western Conference? Time will tell.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
