Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Does Dalton Knecht Have More Value to the Lakers or as a Trade Piece?
Episode Date: May 21, 2025The NBA announced its All Rookie squads, and (not surprisingly) Dalton Knecht wasn't among the 10 honored first year players. To his credit, Knecht was relatively close, finishing in a tie for 13th in... vote total. It's a fair result for a guy who had a lot of highs and lows over the course of the season. His strong suits were clear (shooting, offense, athleticism) and his weaknesses (defense) equally so. Now the Lakers, who have already shown a willingness to trade him, have to make a decision this offseason. Is the guy more valuable to them? Or as a lure to fill holes around the roster? The goal for LA is to build a team that works for Luka Dončić. Knecht fits that profile. He can shoot, he can get to the rim, he can finish above it. On the other hand, he's one of about 2.5 human beings on the roster who have genuine value as players (as opposed to an expiring contract) in a trade (the others being Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura). So Rob Pelinka, just as he does with Reaves, is going to be confronted with some tough choices about Knecht, too. Plus... could LeBron actually leave? There's one at least semi-plausible scenario. HOSTS: Andy and Brian KamenetzkySEGMENT 1: Knecht gets some All-Rookie love. SEGMENT 2: What to do with DK? SEGMENT 3: Could LeBron really go? Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!CarGurusBuy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at CarGurus.comto make sure your big deal is the best deal.SKIMSShop SKIMS Mens at SKIMS.com/lockedonnba. Let them know we sent you! After you place your order, select "podcast" in the survey and select our show in the dropdown menu that follows.Monarch MoneyTake control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNBA at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year.FanDuelRight now, new customers can get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.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
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Hey, everyone, welcome to Locked on Lakers for Wednesday.
Brian Komeneski, Andy Komeneski, Dalton Connect, gets a little bit of love in the NBA, all-rooky teams.
What does his future in LL.A. look like? That's next.
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Andy, to see what's going on and talk to us, talk to each other. Of course, we encourage
everybody to leave questions and comments, especially in the summertime or the offseason,
as that really becomes a lot of the fuel that we use for these daily shows. Today, Andy,
we interrupt conversations about trading Austin Reeves
for conversations about what to do with the other
perceived as the other best, at least human asset
that the Lakers have.
We're not including that 2031 or 2032 pick.
I thought you were going to say what to do with the other white boy.
In all honesty.
It could have.
You're right.
We've got white guy problems here.
I mean, well, because I mean, the third white dude, but Luca is very much off the table.
And Max CLABA hasn't been around long enough to count as anything other than fodder and filler and whatnot.
So we are going to talk about Dalton Connect today.
Of course, the NBA released.
It's all rookie teams.
And Connect was not on them.
He did finish, if you want to kind of categorize it that way, he finished in a tie for 13th.
among NBA
rookies, got 17
second team votes.
So, you know, not a
nothing showing, but
guys like Stefan Castle,
of course, he was the rookie the year, no surprise
he's there, Zachary Elisha Se,
Jalen Wells, Zach Edie,
Alex Sar, that's your first team, Calell
Ware, Bozellis on Chicago,
Eves Misi, Donovan
Klingin, Bob Carrington,
make up your first two teams,
then Isaiah Collier and Kyle Philip, Philip, God, darn it.
Philip, Philip.
Land the plane.
You can do this.
No, I got it.
Bent the wings a little bit and the landing gear shot.
But we got, we set it.
Ron Holland and then you get to connect.
So Holland and connect were a tie.
Tie, yeah.
So like, it's, it's, I first of all, I think that's about fair.
I don't think you look at this and say, oh, my God, what were voters thinking?
You can always argue a little bit.
When you look at this, though, Andy, it was not in my mind a great rookie season.
I mean, there were, you know, Castle had a really nice year.
Risha Say, quietly played well.
But it wasn't like-
Jalen Wells was fantastic.
He really was.
And like, especially, you know, he and Eadie played.
significant roles on good teams, which is unusual for for rookies.
Yeah, I think Jalen Wells, had he not ended up hurting himself,
I think he had a pretty good shot at coming in second versus third,
maybe even some dark horse rookie of the year,
love and for a second round pick, absolute flipping home run by the grizzlies.
Yeah, there's no question.
But, you know, after that, it's sort of,
grab bag as to what you know who finishes where and whatever and a guy like you know where in
Miami has a better opportunity to get minutes because of what was going on down there than somebody
like connect in LA that obviously plays a role but when you look at him relative to some of the
other rookies in the league and where he's what do you think of connect's rookie year overall
before we get into what happens next what's his value what should the
Lakers do with him. What was your evaluation of him over this year?
I think overall Kinex season was promising. I am not surprised that he finished where he
did. And for what it's worth, the drop off from Isaiah Collier, Utah Guard at 11th and everyone
else is pretty stark. There were basically 11 guys in the running for the all-rooky team.
And everybody else is kind of just getting random votes here and there.
Right. And a guy like Jared McCain, you know, would,
finished much higher had he not gotten hurt.
Another guy that might have won had it not been for injury.
He got off to an incredible start to the season.
For a while, he was the only thing keeping the Sixers season for being complete
misery.
And then once he got hurt, it just became complete misery.
That was the end of that.
That was the end of that.
I think Dalton Connect's season was promising.
First of all, he showed that he's an NBA player.
And that might sound like low praise, but it's not because there are plenty of first round picks every single year.
I mean, forget mid first round.
I'm talking about lottery guys.
Sometimes guys in the top 10, hell, we've seen first overall picks that were not NBA players.
Dalton Connect, I think, is an NBA player.
His playing time dropped off in the second half of the season, which was not surprising between the way the team got completely reshue.
shuffled post-Luca, the emergence of Jordan Goodwin. Another nice find for the Lakers this season.
And then as you get closer to the playoffs, most coaches start whittling down their rotation.
And you and I both said, as we were getting into mid-March, April, that we did not expect Dalton Connect to be a part of the playoff rotation.
It didn't surprise either one of us when that proved to be the case.
But there were things that I thought were promising from Dalton over the course of the year.
all, his shooting got better as the season went along post All-Star break. He went from
36% before the break to almost 41%. Afterwards, his shooting on the road got considerably better as
the year went along. For the first couple months, it was like 20% different at the crypt versus
anywhere else. And that becomes problematic over the course of the season. And then also, too,
if you look at the players that were drafted in the reasonably near vicinity of Dalton,
who's taken at 17, with the exception, I brought this guy up a couple times,
of Eve Misi in New Orleans, their young, I think very intriguing center.
There's nobody that was taken after Dalton in the near vicinity that I look at him and say,
that might have been a mistake, whether you're talking about Tristan De Silva and Orlando,
Jacoby Walter in Toronto.
Unfortunately, Ron Holmes missed the entire season with Denver.
But Kishon, George and Washington, Terrence Shannon, and Minnesota.
None of them look at least after one season like they're the guy the Lakers should have taken.
So again, other than Misi, Dalton, as far as I'm not talking about guys who slipped like to 30 or into the second round,
because then you start getting into everybody missed.
No, I understand.
But he looks thus far like he was the best pick or at least a reasonable pick by the Lakers.
I think he showed a lot of promise.
He is definitely an NBA athlete and it's something that this team is lacking.
I think he's got a lot of scoring prowess, occasional playmaking.
He's also got things that he needs to work on, which was to be expected heading into the season.
Yeah.
To me, it's interesting that you talk about like proving that you're an NBA player.
And I think that is particularly important.
I'm sure like Orlando feels the same way about a guy like DeSilva.
It's particularly important for Connect because he's an older rookie.
If he came in and, you know, for the Lakers, kind of underperform and you're not quite sure and like, oh, man, there's a lot to work on here.
What is his skill that fits into the NBA?
whether you think he's a high-end sixth man,
a eventual starter, rotation guy, whatever.
But like, what is the skill that allows him to play?
That became clear.
Like, he is an offensive player.
He's, you know, the shooting was inconsistent,
which you would expect, given both the adjustment to the NDA,
the playing time.
But even then, even with some stretches where you look at and go,
oh, my, like, it doesn't seem like Dalton's hit a shot in a week.
He still finished almost 38% from three point range and 46% over 46% from the field overall,
which is not, which is totally respectable.
I mean, it actually speaks to really quickly his ability to get to the rim.
It speaks to his ability to hit from mid range.
You know, again, there are imperfections.
He needs to be a better finisher.
And I think sometimes a smarter finisher, you would think at times that there was a contract incentive
that he has to show the ball while dunking.
Well, just that he has to make the most bold and aggressive play at the rim.
Like he, I think I tweeted this.
You know, we talked about this a couple of times laughing during that.
Like he looks like he finishes like a player who grew up playing NBA video games.
Like I'm going to have the highlight dunk that I can, you know, that everybody's going to see on 2K.
Like that's that he has that kind of play.
But like he's a supremely confident offensive player and I think he showed that.
Like, you know, you talk about, you know, is he the guy that, you know, that Laker should have taken?
Is he better than the guys who came after?
You mentioned somebody like Kishan George.
And that's like, that's the difference that the Lakers had to kind of figure out.
Because, I mean, George looks like, you know, if you kind of squint and look at it, it's got a little Paul George in him.
Like he had some games where the box score was very full.
Sure.
you know, and defensively with steals and some blocked shots and all the really intriguing player.
He's also 21.
So in a lot of ways, he was more raw.
The Lakers made the choice of drafting an older, more developed player.
How does this impact what the Lakers want to do with him or potentially the idea of putting him into a trade?
That's what we're going to get to next.
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So one of the things that the conversation about depth is something that has really come back into play when people look at roster construction and what works and what doesn't work and why certain teams are winning, why certain teams are losing.
Oklahoma City is favored to win a title of this.
this point, they are definitely the deepest team left in the playoffs, New York, at least one through
six, pretty deep. Indiana has a lot of versatile parts on top of their star players. They can
mix a match. And like Denver, you look at what happened there and it's like, okay, you know,
they've had to get rid of certain players to keep the payroll in line. And like a player like
Christian Brown has really stepped up. He's a really good player.
And like he's in line to get paid a ton of money pretty soon.
But then, you know, guys like Strother and Peyton Watson and Zeke Noggy,
like you're getting, you know, Strother had one really good game,
but you're not getting that consistent production from them that they did,
like in the KCP era where, you know, just rock solid role players.
The Lakers have to both fill out some of their top end talent
and the stuff at the top of the rotation.
They also need to kind of shore up the middle of it.
And in theory, a guy like Connect is exactly what you would want going into next season.
Probably wouldn't start, but as a, you know, first or second off the bench, offensive-oriented sixth man keeps things moving.
It's a great outlet for Luca with the skill set can drive.
Obviously, a phenomenal spot-up shooter can shoot from anywhere on the floor off of any play.
So on paper, he's a great fit for Luca.
So you'd kind of want to keep him around.
He's also one of the only humans of value that the Lakers have for anything beyond their contract.
Claibah is going to be looked at as a contract.
Vincent as a contract.
Rui less as a contract, but to some degree as a contract.
Connect because he's young.
He's cost controlled.
Has that value.
Reeves is kind of the same.
He's considered just a higher level player.
You want to hold on to him because you need cost-controlled players.
You also may need to trade him.
It kind of gets into the challenge that the Lakers are in right now where you need to keep Reeves,
but you also need to trade Reeves to get the really good players that you want.
You want to keep connect, but you also kind of need to trade connect to get what you need,
or at least there's the possibility of that.
You might need to.
I mean, I'm not that I'm not trying to speak.
No, no, no, I understand that.
I understand that.
You are correct.
You might need to.
I mean, the Lakers have quite literally traded Dalton Connect.
He was part of the rescinded deal for Mark Williams over to Charlotte.
And for what it's worth, too, as far as things to like about Dalton's rookie season,
I like how he handled that.
I mean, that is an incredibly awkward situation.
You know, it's the closest thing you and I have ever,
you and I have covered the Lakers for now going on 20 years.
And we covered the team when the league rescinded the Pau Gasol,
Chris Paul, Lamar Odom deal.
And that was incredibly awkward for the players involved,
even down to someone like Andrew Bynum,
who I think at that point, it was made very clear to him,
dude, you're likely next for Dwight Howard,
which eventually was the case just like a year removed.
But, you know, Lamar Odom never got past it.
And he demanded that the Lakers actually trade him.
And then he got moved to Dallas in what was a pretty disastrous deal for the Mavericks in certain respects, in certain respects,
something that the Lakers ended up missing.
You know, Pau Gasol was Powell.
Pow is a professional.
But it was tense for a while.
and you and I both covered Pau and got to know him reasonably well enough to say he never got past it.
Like he never got completely past it.
It was always a thing.
Yeah.
And look, I don't blame him.
The Lakers basically spent three years openly shopping, Pau.
So I don't blame him for feeling that way.
But that thing was in a lot of ways even, I think, less awkward than what went on with Dalton.
because Dalton had only been in the league for like a couple months.
Like he's still learning how professional basketball works.
And then all of a sudden he's thrust into this situation.
He handled it very well.
And I think that's another, you know, check in the good stuff about him box.
I think a lot of this is going to depend on who you're trading him for.
Like if you're trading for, say, an upgrade at center, which this team desperately needs,
that could be the cost of doing it.
It might be the cost of doing business,
but I would say you don't just casually toss around Dalton.
Like he's not salary filler.
I mean,
oh, God, no.
I mean, not to be an a hole,
but that's what Jake Milton's for.
I mean,
no, he is.
He is,
quite literally why he was never like,
you were who are you going to cut this out or whatever
if you try to bring,
if you converted those two-way players,
which turned out to be,
Yeah, a mood point.
But like, you know, people might,
what was suggested Milton, it's like, no, you need him.
Right.
Because of that contract.
It, you know, the Lakers just, it's this really interesting thing.
Like, you know, we talk, one of the things that always comes out of the playoffs,
and we can, you know, we'll do a couple minutes of this and come back from the break and finish it.
One of the things that's always a theme with the playoffs is this expectation, like the next
who's the next team you have to
kind of scheme against,
that you have to orient your roster
to make sure that your team
matches up with their team.
And one of the things that I think is really kind of shined through
over the last few seasons is
how that's kind of a bad idea
because, oh, Denver is going to be, you know,
they've got a window that's going to last for a long time.
And it kind of didn't.
Boston, they got a window that's going to last for a long time.
well, it could have lasted through this year, you know,
but they, I think he probably would have lost that year.
They're going to lose that game five before,
um,
or game four before Tatum got hurt.
Um,
and I think ultimately could have,
you know,
still Boston probably had lost that series.
And now because Tatum's hurt,
who knows what Boston's going to choose to do next year.
Um, you know,
you can look at OKC and say their window is going to last a long time.
They haven't even won a title yet.
So like,
What window were we talking about?
The Lakers, I think, are in a good position because the mission here is really clear.
It's not matchup against Denver, figure out how to match up against Minnesota.
We lost to Minnesota.
What does that mean?
Ignore all of that, in my opinion.
Ignore all of that.
The mission is build the best team for Luca Donchich.
That's it.
And then you cross your fingers and you hope the components of that match up nicely against whatever minutes.
So where the backup from?
I found a gif of the Charlie Brown Peanuts version of Luca Donchage.
That is amazing.
I love that.
That is so joyful.
I know.
Long off season.
So you hope then that, you know, that matches up.
I'm just going to play that.
I think that's going to be on my phone just all the time.
It's so happy.
You hope then that that version of this Luca roster matches up with all these other teams.
But the Lakers can't do two things at once.
They can't be like, we got to build around Luca, but we also have to make sure we can
counter Yokic and we have to be able to have an answer for Anthony Edwards.
And we got to like, that's too many things.
They got to be the best version of themselves.
Correct.
The best version of themselves, assuming Luca is worth doing all of this.
in the first place is going to be the best version of the Lakers that can beat theoretically whoever.
And Dalton, again, on paper, we didn't see a lot of it this year.
But Dalton on paper is absolutely a component of that.
You want guys who can get out on the break.
Dalton can do that.
You want guys who can get vertical at the rim.
Dalton can do that from the back court.
I mean, he's not in a different way than a center, obviously.
And you really want guys that can shoot.
And Dalton can really do that.
So,
Rob Belink is going to be faced with some really difficult decisions.
Depending on, I guess, the perceived value of somebody like Connect around the league,
I do think teams are going to try to take advantage.
Well, this is what's going to be, this I think is going to be interesting for the Lakers
as they look to trade for a center.
they've already announced what they are willing to give up for a center.
So a team like Brooklyn, maybe a team,
I mean, Dallas is its own special category of bleeped up.
But like some of these teams may like, look, man,
we already saw what you were going to give from Mark Williams.
We're not taking less.
Hold that thought because I want to kind of get it.
We got through the tier of players that you wouldn't trade Reeves for,
but, you know, connect might need to get in there for that.
So we'll get to all those things next.
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car gurus.com. I realize, you know, he wasn't in the running for rookie of the year.
He wasn't. I still think Dalton has a lot of appeal around the league. I mean, you know, Mark
Williams is a pretty good player to give up for somebody. I mean, I realize he's got injury
issues and he's going to come up on a contract and all those other things. But Mark was at a
position of value around the league. There aren't that many centers and centers are coming back
into Vogue.
Like, you know, they were like,
he's intriguing. At the very least, Mark Williams
is intriguing enough that the
Lakers initially were going
to look past the injury history
that everyone knew about until they took
a look at the medicals and said,
no.
I would pay,
I'm not a rich man, so I can't say
there's a limit as to what I would pay.
I would pay a good chunk
to find out exactly what they were seeing.
We have absolutely no right to know this.
It is none of our business, and I'm dying to find out.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, just like, this doesn't happen.
And again, the Lakers did this knowing about Mark Williams' history
unless you believe that they just got cold feet and decided at the last minute,
which I'd like to think is not what happened.
Better not be.
Well, that.
For the stink of the Lakers being able to make deals going forward,
it better not be that.
Yes, it really, truly better not be that. Plus also, I feel bad for Mark Williams in some respects because this does not help him with his next contract negotiations.
And if he got hurt, because again, Rob Polinkett just changed his mind, that sucks.
Yeah. So I think he's got reasonable value around the league. But like to your point, the Lakers want Claxton, Gafford.
I mean, you know, still sort of very on the fence with Daniel Gafford as to what I would
give up to get him.
I'm not sure I would put Connect in a deal for that.
I probably would have to for somebody like Claxton.
You know, or a lot of these guys.
Like at the very least, that's going to be the ask.
You know, you knock on New York store for Mitchell Robinson.
You're going to ask for Dalton Connect and all of these things.
And Lakers are just going to have some hard choices to make about where to include him
and in what deals?
Well, I think a lot of this, too, is going to come down to how ready do they think
Dalton is to help next year?
Because if they think he's pretty close to being like a rotation mainstay,
are they like, you know what?
He's there.
Like, we just, we didn't feel for whatever reason that he was ready for the playoffs,
but he's ready to be a part of our regular rotation.
Then I would say you try to keep him more than you try to keep that 2031 pick or
23rd, whichever one it is,
that they're the first one that they can.
I think they have the choice of 31 or 32, I think, is how it works.
Whichever one off the top of my head, I don't remember.
Whichever one it is, I would prioritize keeping Dalton ahead of the pick
because Dalton then becomes a cost control rotation player that you think is going
to have a role.
If they still think Dalton is like a year off,
like basically turns into Max Christie,
where Max Christie really didn't settle into the rotation until,
year three, whether for the Lakers or for anybody, then I would prioritize moving connect before the
pick because then you keep around that pick for another deal down the road or whatever.
They don't have the luxury of not being able to play him 20 minutes a game next year or feel
at the very least being confident that he can play 20 minutes a game next year.
They made at minimum 15.
Yeah.
You may end up in a situation where, hey, you know what?
look we look at all these other players it's the roster is really full again but you know so he can't
there's no space for it but he could like he needs to be they need to be confident that he can give
them 20 15 to 20 solid minutes every night if they don't think he can next year they might want to
move him now because a they need players who can play next year like they just do second if he sits
another year and doesn't play a lot now he's 25 pushing 26
going into his third year and you have to start making decisions.
He's never really, the value starts to really go down.
Before we go, we'll talk more obviously significantly more about Dalton before the end of the year.
We had mentioned this a couple times in the show and haven't quite gotten around to it.
We talked a while ago about whether or not, you know, the odds of LeBron leaving.
And in the mailbag, we got a question about that.
This from Rue L.B.
Is there a chance LeBron doesn't pick up his player option and decide to walk away and sign with a contender like the caps or gold state in the offseason?
I don't think he would go to San Francisco.
But if you were looking for a plausible scenario, Cleveland at least makes some sense from a competitive standpoint.
because if Janus is traded, there's an expectation, at least there's a good chance.
At least he ends up in the West.
The West continues to get harder.
Unless, by the way, Janus just decides, I would prefer to stay in the East.
Sure, he could.
And he gets to dictate some of this stuff.
Like, there's going to be a list of teams.
But at least there aren't that many teams that have the stuff to give Milwaukee.
And at least two or three of them are in the West.
Absolutely.
So then you look at it and you say,
you know, Cooper Flag is here.
So Dallas presumably is going to be a stronger team again next year.
It's just going to be brutal again.
And the East, which was wide open anyway, is even more wide open
with Tatum being out for a significant chunk of the season.
Competitively, if you wanted to win and you had like one or two years to do it,
going back to figuring out a way to get yourself to the East is by far the most,
you know, high percentage way to get it done.
I mean, going back to the east for LeBron really feels like going back to Cleveland.
Correct.
I mean, I can't.
I know that's the question that was posed to us specifically by a rule.
Yeah, that's really what I was referencing.
Right.
But I'm clarifying to say, I don't think that there are a lot of other Eastern Conference
options on the table for LeBron in ways that, because I, and I don't say this as a dig at
LeBron, I get why.
I think the optics to LeBron are going to matter to him.
And I think other than Cleveland, where as much as there were people who will say he's
fleeing the West and he's looking for the path, the least resistance and yada, yada,
like to whatever degree you actually may think that's accurate, Cleveland puts a button
on his career.
It's a full circle type thing.
He still has roots in Ohio.
He's still just a kid from Akron, yada, yada, yada.
And I don't mean that glibly entirely.
Like I think he does have attachments in Ohio.
I think it would be special for him in a lot of ways to come full circle in his career.
I don't picture him going anywhere else east.
And then in the meantime, like, he'd have to be willing to take one hell of a haircut.
Oh, it would be for an exception.
That's the only way he could go.
Right.
I mean, and not by the way.
I mean, I don't know Cleveland's...
I think they're a taxpayer team.
Right.
So you're talking about going back for like a $6 million, $6 million salary, which obviously
LeBron can afford, but he's been reluctant to do that sort of thing for reasons totally get.
But to me, it's either Cleveland or nowhere else because I could be wrong.
Strange things have happened.
I would be very surprised if he opted for the Warriors.
option, like entering that ecosystem that is truly Steph's culture.
Like, and really, I mean, you want to talk about some of the reaction among Laker fans that
LeBron is this interloper, you know, big footing an organization, like trying to use an organization
for whatever.
There's going to be a lot of that if he goes to the Warriors as well.
Well, look, it didn't the reaction didn't.
work for Kevin Durant from a PR standpoint. It did not work for Kevin Durant.
Plus, if he wanted that, he would have, he had the opportunity to do it and he turned it down.
I think, yeah, for sure. I think the Cleveland thing's interesting because like you say, like,
you say, like, you know, he's scared of the West. He's, you know, chasing a ring. He's doing that.
That stuff's going to go there either way. I think the only way you kind of mitigate that is if you
say, you know, I'm signing a one year deal. I'm signing a two year deal, whatever. And I'm
definitively announcing that I'm retiring at the end of that.
He'll still get some of that criticism, but then it doesn't look like you're just going to be hopping from one.
Bron's going to get criticized by some people.
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
But it just doesn't look like then.
You are defining sort of the end of it.
Like I want to go back to Cleveland, finish there.
I'm playing for two years.
So there's no, you know, nobody has to, you know, do the conjecture after this season.
It's two years done.
That's going to be it.
Or one year done.
Yeah, or one year done.
Like for two at the most.
So that may be heads off some of it.
But I, so I think that the way that, you know, Cleveland lost, the Lakers lost,
the West gets harder, the East opens up even more.
There is a credible argument and a credible, like, hypothetical there.
I'm still putting it at 5%.
I'd be surprised.
I don't know that number off the top.
I don't know the number off top of my head.
I would be surprised.
Very surprised.
And there's also the subplot of what becomes of Brony.
I think you can just sneak him on to the roster without them going.
I mean, I'm serious.
Like, what become, I mean, let's be honest.
Andy, Jared Allen.
I mean, the Lakers, look, the Lakers, as much as they may believe in Bronnie's potential or whatever,
they took him because LeBronn was on this team.
That said, though,
we'll pick this up tomorrow a little bit,
but I will say,
Bronny, we haven't gotten a Bronie
and what we'll do,
it's not a high priority.
He had a genuinely nice developmental season
with the G League and all that kind of stuff.
Yes.
We don't have to respond.
I actually think it would benefit
Brony if LeBronne went to Cleveland.
Oh, in certain respects, absolutely.
So that would actually be a good thing for him.
Anyway, Lockdown Lakers on YouTube is where you can
go hang out with 35,000 plus subscribers. And I, of course, will be back on Thursday. You have a
great day.
