Cake wasn’t on the menu at Arby’s, unfortunately.

Four teenagers were out for lunch during a free period in the school day at Prairie View High in Henderson. Zavier DeHoff and Dalton Knecht were friends by then, both juniors on the basketball team. But Knecht was an introvert at heart, and he hadn’t bothered to share that April 19 was his birthday. Well, until the most spontaneous possible moment, as if to use the news as a punchline: in the middle of a conversation halfway through a fast food meal.

“This guy just casually mentioned it was his birthday,” DeHoff recalled years later, laughing. “I don’t say this just because he’s finding so much success; genuinely, he was a really down-to-earth person.”

That was Knecht in high school — reserved, yes, but also too focused on a basketball dream to dwell on other trivial matters, like birthdays. At its most detrimental, that trait may have contributed to lackluster grades that sidelined him for his entire sophomore season, setting him back in his unorthodox route to the 2024 NBA draft. (He has attributed the roadblock to procrastination.) But at its most advantageous, his obsession translated to the court as a quiet, stubborn intensity that eventually propelled him to the SEC, and soon, to the NBA.

With the 2024 draft three weeks away, Knecht is widely projected to become the first Colorado high school basketball player to become a lottery pick since Chauncey Billups. Raised in Thornton, his path included stops at Northeastern Junior College (Sterling) and Northern Colorado before he broke out as a college star this season, averaging 21.7 points and leading Tennessee to the Elite Eight.

But that path started on the freshman team — not even JV — at Prairie View, where Knecht was a scrawny 5-foot-6 guard who told coach Keith Wyatt his goal was the NBA.

Wyatt didn’t roll his eyes. Especially once he grew familiar with Knecht’s shooting form, which reminded him of Steph Curry’s. “He just needs a growth spurt,” Wyatt thought.

He challenged Knecht by putting him in high-stakes situations immediately. In one preseason exhibition, a short-handed version of the varsity roster trailed by a basket with several seconds remaining, needing to go the length of the floor. Wyatt drew up the play for Knecht to receive the inbound pass with a screen at half-court and another at the 3-point line. The freshman used them to create a clean mid-range look. He missed at the buzzer, the Thunderhawks lost, and he went to Wyatt afterward in tears to ask if the coach would ever trust him with the last shot again.

“On the court, he was always looking to kill,” DeHoff said. “I don’t mean that in any cliche way. He genuinely was out there trying to put the ball in the rim every time he touched the ball.”

Knecht channeled that emotion into his free time. While his friends enjoyed playing video games or loitering after school, Knecht couldn’t be bothered to join. He was almost notorious for spending hours at the local Lifetime Fitness, training with his dad. Teammates considered it a given that he would play professionally someday, whether in Europe, Asia or Australia. “It was really just however bad he wanted it,” DeHoff said. “Which, I’ve never really seen him want anything else.”

Free time increased sophomore year when Knecht was deemed academically ineligible to play sports during the fall semester. Wyatt’s plan for him was thwarted. Knecht had been riding the varsity bench by the end of his freshman season, just to be around the team and get a feel for the environment. “A lot of people didn’t like that,” Wyatt said. “I wanted to get a jump-start on him.” The idea was that Knecht would be prepared to start playing varsity as a sophomore.

But then schoolwork got in the way, and Wyatt made another controversial decision: benching Knecht the entire season, even after his grades were up and his eligibility was restored. He didn’t play legitimate varsity minutes until he was an upperclassman. In the meantime, it wasn’t required for Knecht to be around the team at games and practices. Wyatt wanted to send a message that being on top of grades and other external responsibilities was important. From a basketball training standpoint, Knecht proceeded independently from his team for a while.

He became so consumed with refining his craft with a basketball in his hands that he started to perceive conditioning drills as a misappropriation of time — a pesky afterthought, like his birthday. DeHoff, who ascended alongside Knecht to play starting point guard for the varsity Thunderhawks, was several inches shorter than Knecht after the growth spurt finally hit. “He’s like 6-2, 6-3. I’m only 5-9, 5-8. And I’m beating him in suicides and down-and-backs,” DeHoff said. “Things like that would happen and then the coach would be like, ‘Dalton, we know you’re faster than that.’”

It became another step in the natural maturation process of a future draft prospect: harmonizing his passion for basketball with everything else that goes into mastering the sport. Even down-and-back runs.

“I look back on it now and sometimes I think I might have been a little too tough on him at times,” Wyatt said. “… But I did it because we had trained a lot together, and also because his potential. I just didn’t want him to waste it. I wanted us to get to this point. If it didn’t work, I still wanted to say, ‘Well, you did everything possible, and it just didn’t work out.’ I would have been OK with that. I just didn’t want it to be like, well, he didn’t meet his expectations, his grades sucked, he went to a juco and was just done. I was really hoping that wasn’t the story.”

As Knecht grew, so did his reputation. He learned he could dunk. Prairie View ran a half-court press with two guards at the top that often led to easy leak-out slams for Knecht. His confidence and trust in teammates improved. It had to. Gone were the wide-open 3s he could sink with his eyes closed as a freshman. Tactical confidence was required, even from Knecht himself. The team didn’t run a ton of set plays, instead relying on the point guard to create.

“I was the one making every single call, even at times where (Knecht was) scoring 30 points in a game and I have maybe six, four,” DeHoff said. “He’s over here asking me what I think we should run or what we should do. … Toward the end of (high school), he was just a lot more logical. Commanding.”

And he always always wanted the ball for the last shot. Accomplishing that required particular creativity by his senior year. So Prairie View peered all the way across the state for inspiration. Wyatt knew a handful of coaches and players on the women’s team at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, and he had seen a couple of their games in the Denver area. One of their sideline out-of-bounds plays became a blueprint for Knecht’s one shining moment in high school.

“I don’t even remember what we called it,” Wyatt said. “Get him to kind of be the second or third option, but really the first. And just kind of hide it.”

The video will live in his phone forever. Knecht was stationed at the weak side lower block, while the play was triggered by a teammate on the other block running through an elevator screen to catch the inbound pass on the perimeter. As defenders got tangled in the traffic, Knecht waited a moment before entering the action. He went through the elevator screen, popped out to the right wing and reeled in a second pass with a second left — several feet behind the 3-point arc.

After his teammates were done mobbing him in celebration, there were no tears this time, no questions of his coach’s faith in him.