{"id":934209,"date":"2026-10-19T21:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T21:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/934209\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T21:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T21:58:12","slug":"lakers-waive-dalton-knecht-hoops-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/934209\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers Waive Dalton Knecht | Hoops Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lakers, who entered the day with 16 players on standard guaranteed contracts, are waiving former first-round pick Dalton Knecht<\/a> in order to set their 15-man roster for the regular season, reports Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link<\/a>). The team has officially put out a press release confirming the move.<\/p>\n

\"\"The 17th overall pick in the 2024 draft, Knecht got off to a promising start as a rookie but soon saw his production and playing time drop off. In 2025\/26, he averaged 4.2 points and 1.4 rebounds in 10.2 minutes per game over the course of 51 appearances. Known as a three-point specialist, the former Tennessee standout made just 34.2% of 2.1 attempts per game in his second NBA season.<\/p>\n

Knecht was included in a trade that sent him to Charlotte at the 2025 in-season deadline, but that deal was rescinded two days later after the Lakers balked at the results of Mark Williams<\/a>\u2019 physical. While Knecht remained in Los Angeles for another season-and-a-half following that failed trade, his place in the team\u2019s long-term plans appeared increasingly tenuous, especially after a series of free agent additions this offseason left L.A. with more guaranteed contracts than regular season roster spots.<\/p>\n

The Lakers reportedly scoured the trade market in recent weeks in an effort to find a two-for-one deal to address their roster crunch or to simply find a taker for Knecht. However, the 25-year-old had negative trade value on his $4.2MM cap hit and Los Angeles had limited draft capital available to attach as sweeteners in order to extract something of value in return for him.<\/p>\n

In the end, the Lakers simply opted to waive Knecht and eat his guaranteed salary for 2026\/27 rather than attaching one or more of their three remaining second-round picks to move off his contract. As a result of the waiver, Knecht\u2019s $6.45MM rookie scale team option for \u201927\/28 will be voided and he\u2019s on track to become an unrestricted free agent on Wednesday. He would be eligible to sign a two-way contract with another team.<\/p>\n

Knecht\u2019s release ensures that other back-of-the-roster players like Jaden Hardy<\/a>, Bronny James<\/a>, and Jarred Vanderbilt<\/a> will open the regular season with the Lakers, who are now carrying 15 players on standard contracts and three on two-way deals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers, who entered the day with 16 players on standard guaranteed contracts, are waiving former first-round pick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,5850,85],"class_list":["post-934209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-dalton-knecht","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}