The rookies took distinct routes to the NBA and face different pressures – and aren’t they lucky?
New Lakers draft picks Dalton Knecht, left, and Bronny James pose with their jerseys during their introductory press conference on Tuesday at UCLA Health Training Center in El Segundo. EL SEGUNDO — Life isn’t like a math problem; you can take wildly different routes to arrive at the same destination.
To get here, first-rounder Dalton Knecht avoided highways and took in the sights. The 6-foot-5 guard dressed up in a white button-up and slacks is a Tennessee graduate by way of Northern Colorado by way of Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado. And Bronny James is Bronny James. The 6-1 guard drove a faster car, took some shortcuts, avoided traffic and showed up right on time, in time to get hired to work alongside his 39-year-old dad in the family business of basketball.
His story, in his words: “To be honest, just living by the days. Trying not to care about what other people think about me because there’s a lot of people that have something to say. But yeah, I’m just taking it by the day and staying sane while doing it.” There was JJ Redick, the Lakers’ first-time head coach and chum of LeBron’s, whose job will be to steer the roster, however it’s constructed, close enough to a title to satisfy one of basketball’s most demanding and impatient fan bases.
He’s an underdog, a dude who will deal with internal pressure, because until recently, most people didn’t know who he was to have an opinion of him – even if he had a healthy opinion of himself.
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