With the way things have unfolded over the course of the last year, it's looking unlikely that Dalton Knecht will ultimately get the kind of larger role on this Los Angeles Lakers team he likely wants.
The reason for that is multi-faceted. It's about how Knecht's rookie year played out, but it also goes deeper than that. The Lakers are a team on a different timeline and headed in a different trajectory than they were at this time a year ago.
We know that Knecht's rookie season [was a bit of a strange one](https://lakeshowlife.com/dalton-knecht-massive-training-camp-save-shocking-fate). Toward the start of the year, he was looking like the favorite to take home the Rookie of the Year award with his spectacular play. All that pre-draft talk about him being "too old" as a first year player was out the window, and he was proving the haters dead wrong.
And yet, Dalton hit the same kind of rookie wall that a lot of players do. His consistency suffered as the year went on, so much so that JJ Redick nearly removed him from the rotation toward the end of the regular season, and barely played him in the postseason.
Knecht might not have the kind of consistent role he'd probably want
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It was [Knecht's up-and-down play](https://lakeshowlife.com/dalton-knecht-already-making-lakers-rethink-depth-chart) that already had fans wondering midway through last season how sustainable his high level of play would be long-term. But then came the Luka Doncic trade, and everything changed.
With number 77 arriving in town, this Lakers team was put on a completely different path than the one they were going down before. Previously clinging to the foundational pieces that took them to an NBA Finals almost five years prior, LA finally dumped Anthony Davis and somehow came out of things with a top-five player in the association.
What that did was turn the Lakers from a team who would be delusional to think they had a real shot at a championship to a squad that could legitimately get there with the right pieces around Doncic. Unfortunately, that also meant that since the day Luka arrived in town, there has been less margin for error and less time to let younger players develop.
The Lakers became a team that all of a sudden needed proven veteran talent over anything else. Sure, young players with upside were still cool, but they were no longer a luxury the team could afford to focus on.
And that's why this situation is such an unfortunate one for Dalton Knecht. There's still room for him to grow and force the Lakers to value him more, but this serves as a stark reminder of how quickly life can change in this league.