Nearly 11 months ago to date, Dalton Knecht was in the midst of his worst slump of the season. The jump from the Big Sky Conference to the SEC had gone great, the points were pouring in, a tap that was unstoppable.

And then – problems.

He went two for seven against Georgia State, one for seven against North Carolina State and again two for seven, this time against Tarleton State. Before he was the SEC’s Player of the Year, before he was the Lakers’ No. 17 pick and before he looked like the shooting answer the Lakers were never quite able to put around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Knecht was just a fifth-year senior in a huge breakdown.

“DK, what’s good, my man? I just wanted to reach out and say what’s going on?’ Austin Reaves sent a direct message to Knecht on December 23. “…Make sure we continue to reach people. I’ll be watching and if you ever need anything, let me know. I’m nearby.”

Read more: Red-hot Dalton Knecht scores 37 points as Lakers win sixth in a row

On Tuesday night, after Knecht scored 37 points — the most of his young NBA career — the Lakers rookie again mentioned that message from Reaves was important to him. It’s something you think about after a great night, when you’re getting more and more comfortable in the NBA.

“Austin, as I’ve mentioned several times, he texted me during my time at Tennessee. So now that I have him there, I ask him all the questions. He is always ready to help me,” said Knecht. “Me and him shoot every day after training ends. And you have a guy like that who has been in the league and does things like this, like what I did (tonight), if I have a guy like that who continues to have faith in me, always wants me to shoot the ball, that’s always good.”

Fourteen games into the year, nights like this are starting to pile up for Knecht, who somehow found himself available to the Lakers as a No. 17 draft pick.

Tuesday’s showing was the best yet, with Knecht even doing the same shrug celebration after his barrage of threes that Michael Jordan used in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals.

“I have a contract with the Jordan brand,” he said. “Had to.”

It all felt new, because for Knecht as a professional it was the same. He is one of only four rookies to ever make nine threes in a game. He scored 21 points in the third quarter after coming up with huge barrages in New Orleans and against Memphis last week. But for players like Reaves, it all felt familiar.

“If you’ve seen him in college, you know what he’s capable of,” Reaves said after the Lakers’ 124-118 win over Utah. “And when he sees some of his first shots come in, he can go into that mode where he’s unconscious. I kind of expect it from him, because I’ve watched him a lot.

He’s not alone.

James, who mentioned Knecht in an interview last season after he scored 37 points in a loss to Purdue in the NCAA tournament, said he was shocked the Lakers were able to pick him more than halfway through the first round.

This, he said, wasn’t that the Lakers had unearthed a gem. This, he said in a variety of R-rated language, was a team that simply accepted the gift handed to them.

“Has anyone been watching him?” James said in disbelief a few times before the four letters. “…You don’t ‘find’ an SEC player of the year.”

However, the Lakers were looking for a player like Knecht, at least in a role-filling sense. They’ve gone through a litany of shooters designed to give Davis and James more space around the basket, drawing the defense out of the paint and toward the three-point line.

Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were effective spacers. Troy Daniels, Wesley Matthews, Ben McLemore, Wayne Ellington, Trevor Ariza, Kent Bazemore, Malik Beasley and Patrick Beverley weren’t good enough to consistently draw defenders.

But Servant? The feeling is that he’s already earned that kind of respect (even though Utah’s defenders continued to lose him in the third quarter when he made all six of his three-point shots).

“You can’t leave him behind,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of sets we can run and things we can do … to give him a chance or make guys think he’s getting close. And now that kind of ruins their defensive rotation. But that always helps when you have shooters around. Me and Bron play in the post. Now you get that one on one. It’s hard to double team.”

And the Lakers will continue to give him opportunities even if Rui Hachimura returns from an ankle injury sometime this week. Knecht has done too many things for the team on offense this past week, a stretch in which he has made over 66% of his three-point attempts. Over the last four games, Knecht is averaging 24.3 points while leading the Lakers with a plus-minus rating of 9.3.

And considering that JJ Redick is living vicariously through his rookie every time he takes the white board and sets up a play to chase him off a set of screens, the shots will keep coming.

Read more: Lakers rookie Dalton Knecht takes his shot and swishes it

“It’s fun. I have to keep in mind sometimes that I get really excited when I see a play (after the timeout) or when I have an idea to not line them all up for Dalton,” Redick said with a grin. “That’s just, that’s the reality. I want them all for me.”

It all represents some level of collective success for the Lakers. Before Knecht could make these shots, the team had to pick him. Even before that, the belief of players like Reaves helped boost his confidence.

On Tuesday, passes and screens from D’Angelo Russell, assists from James and defensive stops from Cam Reddish and Gabe Vincent all played a role in Knecht getting great looks (and then hitting).

“Recognizing the hot hand, which is a real thing, but recognizing the hot hand and then executing it just shows a level of selflessness,” Redick said. “It also shows a level of basketball IQ. And I thought our guys were great at that.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter on all things Lakers.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.