Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Dalton Knecht, Bronny James and the Challenges of Developing Talent on Good Teams

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Monday, we talked about the challenges Dalton Knecht faced in his rookie season with the Lakers. How much were those challenges responsible for the inconsistencies in his play? How much of it is relat...ed to gaps in his skill set or hoops IQ (based on struggles to learn the proper reads on both sides of the ball)? And did the Lakers potentially get a little unlucky that Knecht fell into their laps, in the sense that they had less hands-on time with him (no workout, etc.) because they never suspected he'd be available at 17? If hoops IQ turns out to be a limiting factor, is that something the Lakers might have discovered had he been inside the building? Is it fair to worry more about Knecht given his (relatively) advanced age for a second year player?Or is all of this simply a matter of time? With more of it -- more reps, more experience -- could Knecht hit his stride this season? And is Knecht limited by circumstance? The Lakers are a team competing for something in the West. They have aspirations. They are not in great position to give rotation minutes to a player who needs extensive freedom to make mistakes, or learn on the job. Meanwhile, Bronny James, the 55th pick a year ago, who certainly wasn't expected to contribute for at least a year or more, was put on a much more traditional development path. With the G-League, he was given the keys to the offense, and asked to run the same sets over and over and over again until the reads became more natural. The results? Bronny seems to have advanced far more significantly from year 1 to 2 than Knecht. Granted, that's based on Summer League as much as anything, but still reinforces how context is often key in professional sports.  HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky SEGMENT 1: Looking at Dalton's development.  SEGMENT 2: Are the Lakers in position to help him grow?  SEGMENT 3: Dalton's development vs. Bronny's.  Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNBA at monarchmoney.com/lockedonnba for 50% off your first yearGametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNBA for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Football season is around the corner, visit the FanDuel App today and start planning your futures bets now.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everyone, welcome to Lockdown Lakers for Tuesday. Brian Komenetsky, Andy Kaminetsky. We keep connecting the dots when it comes to Dalton. Plus, are the Lakers actually going to get more help at the back of the bench than we think that's next? You are Locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everyone, at least those who are still here for making Locked on Lakers, your first list of every day.
Starting point is 00:00:39 Andy thought about leaving Monday through Friday no matter how or where you get your podcast. This one's always free. Never mind to pay while Locked on Lakers on YouTube. It's where you can go hang out with over 36,000 subscribers. All of whom, Andy, are wondering whether or not
Starting point is 00:00:55 the Lakers can get a little more mileage out of their bench this season than last and that involves not just Dalton Connect, but potentially some other players that we really have not spent that much time talking about over the course of the off season. Before we dive into that, though, I need to let people know that today's
Starting point is 00:01:11 episode's brought to you by GameTime. You can download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code locked on NBA for $20 off your first purchase. So we are going to talk about maybe some elements in the back of the Lakers bench that might be
Starting point is 00:01:26 able to contribute. And guys, and maybe we're not paying enough attention to, Andy, but let's keep talking about Dalton Connect, because we did our last segment for Monday's show about Dalton and how concerned people might want to be about him. And specifically, one of the things that I brought up was a question of whether or not Dalton's basketball IQ.
Starting point is 00:01:51 The things that allow him to make the type of reads you need to make offensively and defensively at the NBA level are going to allow him to really thrive in the NBA. at, you know, at a level production that the Lakers had hoped for, that it looked, that he showed flashes of in his rookie season. Needless to say, there was a lot of conversation about that on the Lockdale Lakers YouTube channel. And I know you, to some degree, think the potential criticism of him is not necessarily fair. I think it may be fair is the wrong word. I think some of the criticism.
Starting point is 00:02:33 of what has happened on the court, like in terms of just evaluating it, I think a lot of that is fair or accurate. I don't know if, though, the way we're getting to these criticisms or the way we are framing the conversation around Dalton is specifically fair, both in turn or accurate, the smart way to frame it, whether we're talking about the basketball IQ piece of this or also too. and this was something that you brought up towards the end of the show, and I pushed back on, the idea that Dalton, because he's 24, should be thought of as a close to finished product by the time he arrived in the L in, in the NBA. Closer. Closer. Closer. Not a project, not a development player like you would draft, like, you know, a guy who you know, when you take him is three years away from contributing.
Starting point is 00:03:29 Sure. Right. But there's there is a difference. though between being considered something of a finished product, which is often the way guys who are four years in college get talked about, getting drafted around 22, 23. And for what it's worth, I think it is often a mistake to write off those guys as close to finished product because I think a lot of players continue to improve over the course of their careers. And the flip side is sometimes unseen potential can be just that. Like guys can look on, they can look in theory because of the physical attributes that they have
Starting point is 00:04:07 to have unlimited potential and it doesn't end up happening. But in the case of Dalton, like the idea that he would be considered that, or I think even more specifically, the Lakers would consider him that when they drafted him. I'm not, I'm not sure because I don't have, evidence anecdotal or otherwise of them taking Dalton thinking that he was close to that finished
Starting point is 00:04:34 and totally NBA ready product. But I would consider it bad process to think of him that way because it's not like he played two or three years at Tennessee through his senior year and then entered the draft or even through his junior year. His collegiate career was spent transferring around to from lower level to next level, lower level to next level. Lower level to next level. Juco to whatever northern Colorado is to Tennessee. And by definition, that means transferring to higher challenges and meeting them. But that's much different than the typical road that we talk about for a 23-year-old who ends up a rookie in the NBA. Those guys typically have much more stable, for lack of a better way of putting it, times in college.
Starting point is 00:05:22 And it's the complete opposite of Dalton. And I would say that any player like Dalton, if you just looked at the path and removed the age, he would more likely be thought of as somebody with more untapped potential than closer to the finished product. Maybe. You know, I think you, I don't know how many people there are who fit that template to say, you know, definitively whether you're right or wrong in making that guess. I can only tell you. Well, the very least it's how I would think of it. Right. I was about to say, I can't really push back on you. But I mean, what you're saying has definitely has a certain logic to it.
Starting point is 00:06:03 I just, I think there is, there are always going to be exceptions to every rule. And, you know, while there are players, Austin Reeves is one of them. Alex Caruso was a, you know, the Lakers themselves have seen a couple of late bloomers. You know, Kyle Lowry was a, you know, incredibly talented player who adjusted mentally and then became an All-Star kind of guy. Like there are players who learn to thrive. Josh Hart spent 40 years, I mean 40 years, four years at Villanova almost slipped to the second round and is now considered, I think, anywhere from consensus like top 50 to top 75 player in the league. He was not considered that at all, I think in terms of potential when he was trying. Sure, he was also taken, you know, at the back end of the first round.
Starting point is 00:07:00 I mean, you know, so the expectations were different. But, um, and the point being, he was, I think, considered closer to a finished product guy in traditional terms than he ended up being. Right. But I think he's ended up better than people expected in terms of the amount of production and all that kind of stuff. But Hart came into the league. of playing like this.
Starting point is 00:07:24 He's just gotten more opportunity and has gotten better, you know, his offense, he's been able to find offense in ways that he didn't before. Like his game has no question developed, but he kind of started off as a version of this. And also, too, again, it's not that there aren't exceptions to the rule. But generally speaking, players, there is a point at which they stop really, you know, ramp, you know, that stretch between 20, you know, 19 and 22, 19 and 23 tends to be where a lot of the, you know, the rapid progression takes place. Not all of it. Not every player meets that model, all that kind of stuff.
Starting point is 00:08:07 But we, we certainly grade people and look at people and evaluate them because fewer players kind of, you know, hit that explosion of productivity or, you know, make that. leap without really showing much at 24, 25, 26. It happens less, especially for players who haven't necessarily showed it. If you show it a little bit of those signs before. Sure. But I mean, but he should at least get to play at age 24. No, I mean, he barely played at 24. And I explained this yesterday.
Starting point is 00:08:44 We'll, you know, for Monday and we'll carry this over. And I think some people, I saw people, you know, on the. chat board there on the Lockdown Lakers YouTube page, thinking that I wasn't clear enough about this. And some people thought I was being too harsh on Dalton. I think that what intrigues me about this when I saw the tweets that kind of got me thinking in this from Cranjus, Tim underscore NBA, Lakers exceptionalism pod, and Yovam Buha, they did an exercise where they went through, put the minutes into the rotation.
Starting point is 00:09:17 Dalton wasn't in there. And I don't think there was a whole lot of argument about it. Tim had some tweets about the Lakers basically in their evaluation of why he stopped playing, why his playing time went down. And it was in part because they were trying to do these things for him in terms of sets. And he just wasn't making the reads properly. And it made it harder from the play. We all knew that defensively, but to see it offensively as well,
Starting point is 00:09:45 was something that really stuck out for me. And we'll carry this over after the break. but what it reminded me of, this was something, the Lakers really only evaluated Connect on tape. They didn't, I don't think, have him in the building
Starting point is 00:10:03 because they didn't expect to draft. They do not believe Connect worked out for the Lakers. I'm sure they spoke to him at the Combine and all that kind of stuff. If everybody was there, that's how this works. But in terms of that in-depth, he's in our building. We're asking him questions.
Starting point is 00:10:20 we're talking to him about our stuff and our process. I don't believe that happened with Dalton. And in this particular case, I wonder if that left the Lakers vulnerable to missing certain things about his makeup from a basketball standpoint. So we'll get to that next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by game time.
Starting point is 00:10:42 We have all been there logging on early at the laptop, waiting forever for concert tickets to go on sale, but then some type of glitch you lose your spot for the show you've been dying to see. Live music should be about making memorabilizing. Not dealing with the stress of ticket shopping. That's where Game time comes in. Game time makes getting concert tickets faster and easier than ever.
Starting point is 00:11:02 Prices actually drop the closer it gets to Showtime, and you can save up to 60% off with their killer last-minute deals. With GameTime, the price you see is the price you pay, no hidden fees, and the Game Time guarantee has your back with cancellation protection and more. Take the guesswork out of buying concert and show tickets with GameTime. Download the GameTime app, creating a game time. account, use the code locked on NBA for 20 bucks off your first purchase. Terms apply.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Again, create an account and redeem the code L-O-C-E-D-O-N-N-B-A for 20 bucks off. Download the GameTime app today. Last-minute ticket's lowest price guaranteed. All right. So again, my basic question here is whether or not the Lakers may have missed something and wondering if Kinex got a high, you know, really just has a high basketball IQ. and, you know, he's obviously got a lot of offensive skill. I don't think he's necessarily,
Starting point is 00:12:00 I'm not talking about him as an automatic bust, a terrible player, and all these other things. But, because, like, the shooting skill and the offensive skill is clearly there. But, like, when we talk about him as being kind of a hooper,
Starting point is 00:12:12 it's starting to make me think a hooper in more of a playground sense of a guy who, you know, can dominate unstructured things because he's just got a lot of skill offensively, great shooter, all that kind of stuff. What makes this hard for the Lakers is they're in a challenging spot. A lot of people in the comments section talked about like you have to, you know, give him an opportunity.
Starting point is 00:12:38 You have to be patient with him. You have to, you know, kind of work. And there's some truth to that. I don't deny it. But we also talk about all the time, well, the Lakers can't afford to give guys time off. The Lakers can't afford to, you know, because the Western Conference is so tight that, you know, Dalton isn't going to be afforded. Nobody is going to be afforded on this team.
Starting point is 00:13:05 A lot of extra mileage to make mistakes because let's say giving a player the room they need to try to grow to try to, you know, get those reps and do all that kind of stuff, even at the expense of the team, which is totally working. doing if you're a Charlotte Hornet or a Washington Wizard or whatever. In the Western Conference, that could be the difference between a four seed and an eight seat, you know, a five seed and a 10 seed, as given as tight as things, you know, look like they could be. Dalton's not in a position to be able to get the, like, work through the sort of, you know, is JJ too impatient with me? Is he allowing him to make enough mistakes? They're not. needs to be a little bit of that, but there's a very hard limit, I think, and it's lower than it is for a lot of second-year players who play on worst teams. That part of it is true. The worse,
Starting point is 00:14:05 the team, the more latitude you're going to give to an inexperienced player, because why not? You're not playing for anything. I mean, the truth is more inexperienced players, like Dalton, like Brony, who we may end up talking about, like they will also get less latitude sometimes for the exact same mistakes because coaches tend to feel a rookie or second year player or a less experienced players mistakes more loudly than the exact same mistakes made by a veteran. I mean, by the way, I'm not saying that necessarily even as a criticism of the coaches because there will be more good plays that the experienced players make that also resonate more loudly. I'm just saying that's often the case. What I think that was interesting, though,
Starting point is 00:14:51 about this when we swing back to the idea of Dalton's basketball IQ. And for what it's worth, I have not really made up my mind one way or the other on this. Like I want to see more stuff with more time to grow. But the part of this that I think is potentially unfair to Dalton in evaluating him this way is again, with this sort of idea that he arrived in the in the NBA as more of a finished product, you know, more of an NBA ready player in a lot of ways judged on the basis of age. I think people are forgetting a lot about what he actually did in college that got him drafted in the first place and led to him rising up through again, Juco to Northern Colorado, Tennessee in the first place.
Starting point is 00:15:39 He was on ball a lot more. He had a lot more usage. And the role that he was asked to play on the Lakers is different than what he was asked to do in college. And that's fine because in all likelihood, the odds of Dalton being in a position to do more of like what he did at Tennessee likely going to be limited. So he doesn't need to learn. True. Most first rounders, you end up playing a different role than you did in college.
Starting point is 00:16:06 No question. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that that's fine. But I think a lot of the low IQ prognosis or concerns with Dalton are being framed through this idea that he should know how to do. this completely different thing that he didn't because hashtag old. And I don't think that's fair to him. What he's being asked to do is not easy. What he's being asked to learn is not easy.
Starting point is 00:16:33 And I think in a lot of ways, it is just assumed he would know how to do this because we heard that JJ was immediately drawing up plays for him the moment that they drafted him. And like JJ saw him as the version of, like the younger, more athletic, bouncier version of himself, which he might turn out to be. But you know what, JJ Redick didn't do a lot of his first year or so?
Starting point is 00:16:55 Play. Like it took a minute before JJ could get on the court. By the way, for some of the exact same concerns that people have had about Dalton Connect, JJ ended up having a terrific career. Like he had a really, really high-end role player career. And he got better at certain things as he went along. Right. None of which is to say that this will happen for Dolton.
Starting point is 00:17:20 Dalton or that the concerns about Dalton aren't legit. I've expressed concerns about Dalton. Certainly his summer league was alarming. I'm just saying that I think a lot of the way these conclusions at large, because Cranjus and Yoban are not the only people who've kind of arrived at this, I don't know if it's all being, if it's all being reached in a way that's totally fair to Dalton. That may be.
Starting point is 00:17:44 And I think at the difference, you know, even in your JJ example is, you know, it doesn't play a lot and he builds his way up to that, which indicates that he's learning, whereas small sample size, all these are the things, it's not the only reason he didn't play. He was traded three quarters of the way through the season and all of these things have an impact. And it was really, you know, by most of the reporting and discussion, it was defense that was really keeping him off the floor rather than offense. But, you know, if what you're talking about is true, and I think you're right, like it is, we often underestimate how hard certain transitions are.
Starting point is 00:18:22 And look, maybe this goes back to, you know, the Lakers like most people who have, maybe we'll look back on it and say the Lakers like most people who were in that mis-evaluated the player for the job that they were going to be asked to do in the NBA. And this is one of these things, and we'll get to it maybe with Brony in the next segment. It's, you have to be able to do the thing that's going to be your skill set. chart is a great example of this because what heart has been asked to do at the pro level. And each year, he's just been able to build it up more and more and more earn more trust from coaches who look at it and see, you know what?
Starting point is 00:19:00 He just makes good plays over and over and over and over again. And like, you know, wow, you know, our six foot four guard is our best rebounding player on our team. And they just, you just sort of keep stacking stuff up. And eventually you become somebody who plays 30 minutes a night for good teams and all that stuff. He's building on the role and the types of things that he was going to be asked to do at the NBA level. He's just turned out to be able to do it really well. For a player like Dalton, the adjustment is harder.
Starting point is 00:19:33 100% agree because he's not going to be the primary attacking on ball players. So you have to be able to figure out what do I do? do next. And this is where like we'll find out like the Lakers have to hope that he's got the, you know, the basketball IQ to be able to figure it out because they gave them just, just in that one little comment. And it was said at Monday, I'll say it again. There's not enough in that to make huge definitive just, you know, evaluations. It just got me thinking. If he if he doesn't have like it's the it's going to be harder for him. If he doesn't have. If he doesn't have that mental computer to be able to adjust and play a new role. And I just wonder if it's
Starting point is 00:20:21 something that because he wasn't in the building, the irony for me would be the Lakers who by every account lucked out to be able to get connect at 17, you know, five, six, seven, eight spots beneath where most mock drafts having had him go. Most of them, if I remember, remember correctly, at least half he was in the top 10. Yeah. And so like I agree. Like this thing falls into your lap and you, you just, you take him. I get it.
Starting point is 00:20:57 And, you know, we'll see with a player like connected may just be that he needs to be in a situation where he can do more of the stuff that he was really good at Tennessee, that he just, maybe doesn't have the versatility to adapt to a different. situation. Maybe playing a year with Luca can unlock stuff with Dalton. I mean, I'm not writing the guy off by any stretch of the imagination. I am very concerned. I think Summer League was incredibly disturbing if you're a Lakers fan because he didn't look any different, like from first year to second year. That's a terrible sign. But, you know, he's also not played a full season with Luca, who's made players who might be more ordinary than him look like.
Starting point is 00:21:43 really, really good. It was just, it's this sort of irony of the potential irony of the situation that really got my attention. And you compare that, though, in his development. Like, how are the Lakers going to get him to a place where he can contribute in the ways that they need him to versus a player like Brani, who was not expected to be in the rotation and wasn't and has been able to be on a completely different development path. What the Lakers have been doing with him is like a totally 180 from what they're able to do with Dalton. And we can talk about that.
Starting point is 00:22:24 Plus, is there help at the end of the bench that we haven't been talking about enough? We'll get to it next. So Andy, earlier in the summer, Dave McManneman wrote a great story on Brony for ESPN the magazine. And we had it on the rail. ESPN.com. Oh, ESPN.com, sorry. For like, we used to work for ESPN magazine.
Starting point is 00:22:53 It was on the rail for what, like eight shows in a row. We just never got to it. But this is a really perfect opportunity because one of the things that really stuck out in that story was how the Lakers are working very specifically to try to develop Brani to play a certain role for the Lakers. are working very specifically to try to develop brawny to play a certain role for the lakers as an NBA player develop certain skills that allow them to do it and then play a certain role in the NBA none of which by the way is has anything any hints of being a star player or something like that but the difference is because brawny was the 55th pick because he was 19. He did all of this stuff at the G League. All of this stuff is being designed for him there. He's
Starting point is 00:23:44 getting all of his reps in the G League. And that plan and the way it can be executed is just completely different because of the context of who he is, how old he was, expectations, all that stuff. Yeah. I mean, in a weird way, it's very similar to Dalton in the sense that because he's Ronnie James, everybody is paying hyper close attention to it. Like you could actually argue that, I mean, certainly like globally league-wide, he's under far more scrutiny than Dalton Connect. He is.
Starting point is 00:24:22 That I'm not arguing, but that's different than the plan that's being used to develop and the context in which he gets to develop. Absolutely. I'm just saying it's interesting because you can't remove the scrutiny in either case. the piece that Dave wrote, and we'll include it in the show notes, it's really, really well done. But there's a lot of conversation in there with Zach Guthrie, who coaches the South Bay Lakers. And side note, I did a pretty extended sit down with him for my ESPN LA 710 show Lakers talk that runs every week.
Starting point is 00:24:55 And I was really impressed with Guthrie, like just the way he broke down questions that I had from about brawny, but just his approach to developing young players in general. I was very, very impressed with Guthrie. But one of the things that he talks about in this piece from Dave McManumann, is how ultimately they decided that they were going to start giving Brony on-ball reps, about maybe halfway or so through the G-League season, and essentially operate a lot like a point guard. And they were going to let him play through the mistakes,
Starting point is 00:25:28 but the deal was he had to bring it on the other side of the ball. like bring the defense that people had more confidence in with Brony to begin with when he was drafted than an offensive role. And I still have questions as to what his offensive role is going to be at the NBA level, assuming his career has longevity. But we saw much more of that in what Guthr was talking about in the summer league. Like it was especially maybe second or third game. on where Brani really was running sets and had the ball in his hand more often.
Starting point is 00:26:06 And it wasn't brilliant, but he looked good. And more importantly, I thought he looked comfortable and he looked like he had an actual purpose out there. Right. Because the biggest concern I've had about Brony and sort of skepticism about him is even though his improvement, I think, has been tangible. And I would like to see this work out for Brony because he seems like a good, hardworking kid who just wants to prove himself on his own merits and leave it at that. But it wasn't clear what they wanted from him offensively. And if his role is not, I think, specific on offense and he can succeed in it,
Starting point is 00:26:45 he would need to be an otherworldly defender to get by essentially a defensive specialist that size. Or an otherworldly shooter. Like he's got to be, you know, there's something that he's got to be able to do something. I think it's going to be very hard for him to be an otherworldly shooter. You've got to be like an Isaiah Joe type. It is hard to be an otherworldly shooter at like 6.1. Right. 6.1.5. That's basically what he is.
Starting point is 00:27:11 And so like he's just too little to not have the ability to at least work like a Gabe Vincent style point guard. Where like you can be part of the, you know, your, you're, you're, he, Bronny's career, if it stays with the Lakers, theoretically would basically entirely overlap with Lucas. Like there, he may never need to be a true primary point guard. But the Lakers have said, you got to have better ball handling skills than that. What was fascinating, though, was what Zach Guthrie said too, wasn't just we're going to put the ball in your hands. It's, we're going to run the same set over and over and over and over. So like if you go and you watch these, you know, 15 G league games or whatever it is that they started doing this, Brani, like they're just doing the same set over until we're going to do it until you learn the reads.
Starting point is 00:28:01 And then I guess the next step is we'll run a different set. And then we'll keep expanding the playbook like he's a quarterback. But the difference is you can do that. I'm sure at the beginning, like he made a lot of mistakes. But the whole point of the G League is that you put people in a situation where they can make a lot of mistakes and just keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And you can see with Brony a major, like you said, major difference between year one and year two.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And at least at the summer league level, at the very least. Yeah, for sure. And that's all we have to work on right now. You could see the difference between the beginning of the season with Brony, last year's summer league to what he looked like in the G league at the end of the year and what he looked like in the sort of small runs that he got with the Lakers at the end of the year. I'm not saying the guy was like rotation ready, look great, future All-Star or whatever, but he looked like a way better player than he did
Starting point is 00:28:58 in the beginning of the season. And again, developmentally, you'd expect that. He missed basically his one college season, came into the league as a 19 year old, all of that. But that difference between how the Lakers are able to develop him versus Connect, because Connect spent the year with the big club, so to speak, and just wasn't given that opportunity.
Starting point is 00:29:23 I don't think unfairly, But like, you know, just you don't have that chance when you're playing with the, the NBA team the entire year. I wonder if that's the type of development. If the Lakers are going to need to teach Dalton something new, like, and it's like, okay, this is a little harder from them we thought. Maybe they'd have been better off just sending them, like, sending them down to do the equivalent of what Brony was doing. We're just going to keep running you off the same sets until you start to read it. We've said a million times context for every professional athlete, who they get drafted by, who's on their team, who the coach is, what the year is, all these make such a massive difference in the development of a player. And in this particular case, like you just see it with the two guys that the Lakers drafted last year.
Starting point is 00:30:17 And then in the meantime, Nate McMillan, Lakers' assistant coach, was on the, what's it called? the sports shop with Reese and KMAX show and was talking about Brony and said, I'm not going to read the entire quote, but we've seen a lot of growth from year one.
Starting point is 00:30:33 He had, I thought, a really good summer league. A young man like that coming in with this type of pressure that he came into the league and last year was unbelievable. Went on to say,
Starting point is 00:30:41 his shot was never broken, but the confidence you can see him knocking on the shots, getting into the basket defensively. We wanted him to challenge himself to pick up the ball. I love Brony. Great young man,
Starting point is 00:30:51 and we expect him to possibly get some minutes this year. Now, obviously, There is there's two different things, expect and possibly. So there's some hedging going on there. But just the idea that McMillan would even go there, as opposed to saying, you know, we think he might still be a year away, but we like the progress. He's moving in the direction that we were hoping from him.
Starting point is 00:31:19 We've got nothing but great things to say about the way this is going. Just the idea of setting up the possibility of Brony playing, putting aside that that could theoretically cut into Dalton's minutes unless they just both end up playing and other guys ended up losing their minutes. Were Brony able to play? It would mean, most likely, him providing a certain amount of skill set and attribute that the Lakers don't have in turn or don't have a ton of, certainly in players that can contribute. reasonably well on both sides of the ball.
Starting point is 00:31:55 The athleticism from brawny, the defensive energy, you know, youth, actually being able to just put him out there for as many minutes as he can handle without worrying about attrition over 82 games leading into the playoffs. Like it would be a nice find and a nice upside for the Lakers if you actually are able to use Brony as a 10th man. That would be a really good development for this team. It would be huge. And I would put connect in that category because I don't think Dalton is somebody that is currently being counted on in that initial rotation.
Starting point is 00:32:36 He's going to play. But that's different than being one of the core guys who you expect on a night and not out to play 10 minutes or more. I don't think he's in that group yet. And if he cracks it, that would make a huge difference because, again, it means the Lakers are getting. internally more production out of a roster spot than they did before. It applies to Connect. It applies to Brony. It applies to Maxi Claibah, who we will discuss tomorrow.
Starting point is 00:33:05 Lockdown Lakers on YouTube is where you can go hang out with over 36,000 subscribers to the channel. We will see everyone then.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.