Lakers Waive Dalton Knecht Two Days Before Opening Night: What Happened to the No. 17 Pick
The Los Angeles Lakers waived Dalton Knecht on Monday, two days before their season opener, after failing to turn him into the big man they spent the offseason chasing. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported it first. The team confirmed the move in a release.
Knecht was the 17th pick in the 2024 draft. He is 25 years old. He played 132 NBA games, all for the Lakers, and now he is on waivers two days before a season he was never going to be part of.
The Math Was Simple and Unkind
Los Angeles had 16 players on standard guaranteed contracts and the roster limit is 15. The front office tried to package Knecht, and reportedly Jarred Vanderbilt, into a consolidation deal for a center. Nobody bit. So the 2024 first-rounder became the odd man out.
Waiving him saves nothing this season. His $4,201,080 salary for 2026-27 is fully guaranteed, a third-year option the Lakers exercised themselves in October 2025, and it stays on the books. What the move does eliminate is his $6,452,860 team option for 2027-28. ESPN’s Bobby Marks summarized it as a roster now down to 15 guaranteed contracts with no salary obligation for the following year.
Knecht becomes an unrestricted free agent on Wednesday and can sign a two-way deal elsewhere.
Year One Looked Like a Hit
As a rookie he played 78 games, averaged 9.1 points in 19.2 minutes and shot 37.6 percent from three. He dropped 37 points on the Utah Jazz in a single night. He had been SEC Player of the Year at Tennessee and carried the Volunteers to an Elite Eight.
Then came February 2025, when the Lakers agreed to send him, Cam Reddish, a 2031 first-round pick and a 2030 pick swap to Charlotte for center Mark Williams. The deal was processed, then rescinded two days later. The Lakers cited a failure to satisfy a condition of the trade. Williams had failed his physical.
Knecht came back to a locker room that had just traded him. “It felt like a movie,” he said at the time. “Rob called me and said you’re coming back.” He also offered the professional’s answer: “I get it’s a business, so at the end of the day, I told them let’s just go play basketball.”
Year Two Was the Problem
Last season his minutes collapsed to 10.2 a game across 54 appearances. His scoring fell to 4.2 points and his three-point shooting dropped to 34.2 percent. A rotation shooter who stops making shots does not have much of an argument, and the Lakers had spent the summer stacking the roster with players who do other things.
Walker Kessler arrived in a sign-and-trade from Utah. Quentin Grimes came from Philadelphia, Collin Sexton from Chicago, Kevon Looney from New Orleans, Jaden Hardy from Dallas. Austin Reaves re-signed. LeBron James left for the 76ers in July, which makes Luka Doncic the lone star in the building and leaves JJ Redick, now in his third season, with a roster built around filling in the gaps around him.
What It Means for Wednesday
The Lakers open at home against Golden State on Wednesday with 15 standard contracts and three two-way players. Kessler is the projected starting center, with Looney behind him and Sandro Mamukelashvili taking some minutes there. The frontcourt is thin, which is exactly the problem the failed Knecht trade was meant to solve.
No Lakers official has commented on the decision beyond the transaction release, and Knecht has not spoken publicly. Bleacher Report floated Charlotte, which tried to acquire him before, and Orlando as landing spots. Somebody will take a flier on a 25-year-old who once scored 37 in an NBA game. The Lakers decided it would not be them, and they are paying him $4.2 million to find out.
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.
