The Los Angeles Lakers expected Dalton Knecht to be off the board well before their No. 17 selection in last June’s draft. Teams were reportedly put off by his age at 23 and by his interviews.
During the draft, Rob Pelinka called Jeff Schwartz and spoke to Knecht’s team with Excel to make sure there wasn’t an underlying issue the Lakers were unaware of to account for his fall.
“It was like, ‘You’re giving me your word?'” Pelinka told ESPN. “I had to do a trust call of, ‘There’s no red flags, right? You’re giving us your word.’ And that’s when it started to unfold.”
“He’s focused on basketball,” assistant coach Gregg Polinsky said. “If you think he is going to woo you with his worldly nature or talk about how he speaks three languages, think again. He doesn’t care about that. DK, he’s a baller, simply stated.”
Tennessee assistant coach Rod Clark thinks Knecht’s honesty might have hurt him.
“I guess some team asked him if he liked to read, and he told them no,” Clark told ESPN. “And I’m like, what does that have to do with playing basketball? All he’s doing is just being himself and telling the truth, like, ‘No, I don’t like to read.’ Which, I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of people that don’t like to read.
“But that’s him. Some people have met him and they’re like, ‘Yeah, he doesn’t talk much, right?’ And then people that know him are like, ‘Man, that dude’s funny as hell.’ He’s one of those guys that if he doesn’t know you, he has a real guard up and his antennas are up and he’s trying to feel you out to see what you’re about.”