Los Angeles Lakers rookie Dalton Knecht is back in the City of Angels. The 17th overall pick, he’s one of the more popular and productive players in his draft class. In fact, he was among the players who made the cut for the NBA’s Rising Stars roster. Yet, that didn’t stop the Lakers from including the 23-year-old in a package for Charlotte Hornets center Mark Williams.
A trade that has now been rescinded due to Williams’s failed physical.
Lakers Rookie Dalton Knecht Dishes D’Angelo Russell’s Advice
It isn’t often that trades get voided. More to the point, most rookies haven’t gone through what Knecht’s experienced in the last 10 days. With that in mind, the advice that he received from Brooklyn Nets guard D’Angelo Russell, who the Lakers traded earlier this season, may be playing in his mind.
“D-Lo, he gave me the best advice,” he tells reporters during NBA All-Star Weekend (h/t ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin).
“Right after a game, just move on. Don’t care about how you did. Just move on because you got the next game coming towards you. No matter how high or how low that game was, you got to move on and be ready to play the next one and get better.”
Russell was teaching Knecht how to approach the season game by game. Nonetheless, given the situation that Knecht just experienced, it’s also applicable to how he should approach the season after the trade. No matter how he feels (or felt), he has to move on and be ready to play the next game.
The Merits Of D’Angelo Russell’s Advice
‘Don’t get too high or too low‘ isn’t novel advice at the NBA or any other level.
Nevertheless, it’s an important lesson for players, especially over the course of an 82-game season that takes six months to complete. During any competitive event, the emotions and adrenaline that are flowing can cause a massive expenditure of energy. To hold onto the result of the game, whether it’s in terms of individual or team performance, would only magnify that effect.
Doing that after every game?
If Knecht was on a losing team, like the Hornets, it might have caused him to detach. Indeed, players on those type teams often disassociate themselves from the result of a game. Not in the sense of not getting ‘too high or too low‘ but in not caring about the result of the game because of a fatalistic mentality. Russell’s advice might have kept Knecht from sliding down that slippery slope.
Playing for a franchise hovering around the middle of the pack, like the Lakers, could cause plenty of mental strain. Being teammates with a four-time NBA MVP and four-time NBA champion in LeBron James already comes with its own pressure. Being employed by an organization that’s already won 17 championships and believes it should always be in contention for one does too.
Carrying the stress of each game when L.A. constantly takes two steps forward and one step back or two steps back and one step forward could seep into Knecht’s performance. Ironically, this may have been one of Russell’s problems. There’s no doubt that Russell’s a highly-skilled player but he wasn’t suited for the pressure of playing for the Lakers.
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