As rumors swirl about their pending roster crunch, the Lakers were without two players during Monday’s practice.
Third-year wing Dalton Knecht and third-year guard Bronny James were excused from the session, according to Lakers coach JJ Redick.
The Lakers have until 2 p.m. to trim their roster from 16 players signed to standard NBA deals to the maximum of 15 on Monday.
Redick said the Lakers had a couple of players who were “under the weather” before adding that James and Knecht were excused from practice.
Redick added that the Lakers hadn’t made a decision about their roster crunch as of the time of post-practice media availability.
“Those decisions will be made at 2 [p.m.],” Redick added.
Knecht’s name has swirled in Lakers’ roster crunch rumors for the last several weeks.
And after nearly three months of deliberation, they decided to part ways with the third-year wing whose role with the team has diminished over the last couple of weeks.
The No. 17 pick in the 2024 draft, the former Tennessee Volunteer made a big splash early on as a rookie with the Lakers before his role with the team diminished.
He was in the rotation from the start of the 2024-25 season, stepping into the starting lineup in mid-November amid injuries — which produced the best stretch of his brief NBA career: Knecht averaged 18.9 points and 4.9 rebounds in the final nine games of November 2024 (nine starts).
Even when he hit a shooting slump in January and December, the 6-foot-5 wing was still getting consistent playing time as a part of the rotation.
It looked like Knecht was going to come out of the slump after scoring 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting in the Lakers’ win over the Clippers on Feb. 4, 2025.
But his career hasn’t been the same since.
The Lakers included him in the trade for Mark Williams that was rescinded, and Knecht’s playing time for the Lakers wasn’t the same after he returned to the team.
That was still true during his second season with the Lakers in 2025-26: He played 553 total minutes during the regular season across 54 games after recording 1,494 minutes in 78 regular-season games as a rookie.
“The biggest thing is the team changed,” coach JJ Redick said last week when asked where things went wrong for Knecht. “The team changed. The needs changed, the fit changed. I think he got better as a player over the last two years. I think each guy has, particularly last year, each guy got plenty of opportunities with the amount of injuries we had. So I just think coming into this year, we added a lot of wings and he’s in a tough spot right now.”
Knecht averaged just 2.8 points (11.8 minutes per game) in four of the Lakers’ five preseason games.
James, the oldest son of former Lakers superstar LeBron James, has struggled during the preseason after taking significant strides in his development to close out the 2025-26 season.
He’s averaged just 2.2 points on 25% shooting in the Lakers’ five preseason games.
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