The Lakers lost their preseason finale to Denver 121-106, and the loudest reaction online has been aimed at Bronny James. Wrong target.
Start with what's true. Through this preseason, Bronny shot under 27 percent from the field and under 15 percent from three, and he racked up more turnovers than points across his minutes. Those numbers are bad. Nobody should pretend otherwise. But the idea that he's about to be cut has it backwards. Reports this preseason say the Lakers guaranteed his salary early and that head coach JJ Redick expects him to make the roster and compete for reserve point guard minutes. The player actually fighting for his NBA life is Dalton Knecht, who shot a similarly ugly percentage from the field and from three, and who the front office has reportedly tried to trade for a backup center rather than keep. If the organization itself doesn't believe Knecht is safe, the fans screaming for Bronny's job are screaming at the wrong name.
The real problem here is the people who put these two kids in this spot. The Lakers entered camp with 16 standard contracts for 15 roster spots, which means somebody in that front office miscalculated the roster math months before this game tipped off. Rob Pelinka's staff kept Knecht around on his guaranteed money while developing Bronny alongside him, but never resolved who was actually going to play. LeBron James is gone to Philadelphia now, and there's no superstar cushion left to hide bad reserve minutes behind, so the front office is shopping a former first-round pick for spare parts because it ran out of better options. The kids just inherited that math, and they're the ones standing in it when the shots don't fall.
The preseason-doesn't-matter crowd has a point: health was uneven, rotations weren't finalized, and Denver got a breakout game off the bench from a player stepping into bigger minutes with Aaron Gordon out, the kind of thing that happens in October and rarely repeats. Luka Dončić didn't play in the second half at all. None of this was a fully committed Lakers lineup. Fine. But set the final score aside and the shooting numbers from Bronny and Knecht across the whole preseason don't move. That's weeks of the same outcome, a trend too long to blame on one bad half or a tough matchup.
The organization never had a real plan for these two beyond hoping development would quietly fix a roster crunch it built itself. It didn't. Pelinka's front office put together a 16-man roster for 15 jobs and bet on a shooting guard whose jumper disappeared, and now the internet is taking its frustration out on a point guard the coaching staff never put on the bubble in the first place. Fix the plan. Leave the kid alone.
