On Sunday, after dinner, I called my mother in Indiana. This time she was the one who wanted an explanation. She had read that the Lakers had sixteen players on guaranteed contracts and that they only need fifteen in the regular season. She asked me how you get to sixteen when you can count to fifteen.
I tried. Brett Siegel, of ClutchPoints, writes that the Lakers have explored consolidation trades, with Dalton Knecht and Jaden Hardy among the most likely to be included. A two-for-one trade takes one contract off the books. Jovan Buha talks about three players for two spots: Knecht, Hardy and Bronny James. Knecht is starting his third season, taken seventeenth in the 2024 draft. Seventy-eight games as a rookie, fifty-four last season.
She asked what the coach said. I read her JJ Redick, quoted by BasketNews: “First of all, he’s been a pro. He’s been in the gym and, like he has since day one, he’s worked his butt off all offseason.” And: “I know he’s hungry to play and hungry to earn a spot in the rotation.”
Let me tell you: in 2000, I arrived in Charleroi with one bag and a one-year contract. On the first day, in a hall with badminton lines on the floor, the coach counted the players. There were more of us than jerseys. I didn’t sleep. I did box-out drills until ten at night, and the next morning the minibus left with me in it. Nobody wrote a piece about it.
I told my mother all that. I said this guy had done the same thing all summer, in the gym, and that his coach had said so in front of everybody.
She thought about it. Then she said: “He did his job. What’s left is an addition problem, and he’s not the one who did the addition.” She said: see?
It’s true, we checked: BasketNews.
