The Lakers need to permanently bench Dalton Knecht.
They cannot afford to carry another lousy defender. They already have Luka, LeBron and A Reaves. It is too much. Knecht is going to kill that team. They were a -16 in his 13 minutes last night. They probably would have won if he wasn't playing.
They cannot afford all those rookie mistakes / bad defense from Knecht on top of all the other defensive issues they already have.
I mean, I wouldn't blame all of that on Knecht. From my point of view that team has had one defensive philosophy all year long: "AD save me." Any time I'd watch them, they would have defenders mixed up all over the place, and they were kept afloat by the fact that AD is a viable defensive engine by himself. Now AD is gone. Nobody to protect all of these other minus defenders anymore. Knecht is just one of many problems in that respect.
I don't think that team is a contender this year and I think there's nothing they can do about it now, Knecht or otherwise. The Luka trade was a no-brainer from a value standpoint and gives them direction post-Lebron, but it left them an unbalanced and incomplete roster in the near-term.