Paul Pierce Calls For Lakers To Trade Star Rookie Amid NBA Summer League

The Los Angeles Lakers tried to land another star in NBA free agency or via the trade market. It didn't work out, and now they enter the 2024-2025 season with Anthony Davis and LeBron James running the show once again.

Trae Young, Klay Thompson, DeMar DeRozan and others were names that circulated as potential names for the Lakers to land, only for them not to end up in Los Angeles. However, Paul Pierce dropped a surprising take on an episode of Undisputed and suggested the Lakers should package rookie Dalton Knecht for a third star.

"Dalton Knecht has improved his stock. So now you can throw him in a package...to where you can probably net a third star," Pierce said. "I don't know who that star is, but I'm happy to see that Knecht is playing this way because if he hadn't been playing this way, that wasn't even a possibility."

Knecht was widely considered a top-10 projected pick leading into the 2024 NBA Draft but fell to the Lakers at No. 17 overall.

The sharpshooter who played his final year of college basketball at Tennessee has played well in a Lakers uniform. On Thursday night against the Cleveland Cavaliers, he scored a team-high 20 points with seven rebounds in 29 minutes.

Knecht sat out Wednesday's game, but he dropped a team-high 19 points in the Monday night loss to the Boston Celtics.

On the other hand, the Lakers trading Knecht in a package would be surprising given their lack of young players and draft capital for the future.

The rumored packages have included D'Angelo Russell, Jarrod Vanderbilt, and Gabe Vincent, with Austin Reaves' name floating around. Moreover, perhaps the only plausible option is Trae Young, and the recent reports don't bode well on that front, either.

While Pierce is right about Knecht's stock trending up amid his Summer League performance, it remains to be seen whether Rob Pelinka and the Lakers would consider moving on from their prized draft pick so early in his career.

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