Every NBA season there is always at least one rookie whose highlights hit your feed before your alarm even goes off. This year that unexpected hero has turned out to be Kon Knueppel – a fair-skinned guy with the face of a model accountant who can casually quote Scripture after games while breaking long-range shooting records and barging into the Rookie of the Year race. It is still too early to pencil him in as a future legend, but it is already impossible to ignore what is happening – there are simply too many facts, numbers and details lining up into one neat, almost pastoral story.
A Crownless Rookie With A File Full Of Records
The season has only just started to pick up speed – a little over a month has passed – and the label of "main Rookie of the Year favorite" has already been attached to Cooper Flagg, VJ Edgecombe and now Kon Knueppel. Any sweeping statement this early should, strictly speaking, be divided by the number of games still left to play. But if we talk about the present moment, Knueppel looks like at least the most convincing player in the rookie race.
The Charlotte forward has already rewritten the record book for perimeter rookies: 69 made three-pointers in his first 20 games – a new mark for a first-year player. He also became the first player in league history to score more than 150 points and hit 30 threes over his first 10 games. His averages look solid as well: 18.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists per night – not just background numbers, but the trace of a whole series of standout performances.
The game against the team from his native Milwaukee turned into a personal manifesto for Con: 32 points – a career high in the NBA. Yes, the Hornets still lost 134–147, but after the final buzzer Knueppel invited his teammates over to his place – not to celebrate, but to process the loss together. For someone else that might be a trivial gesture; for a team whose public face for years has been LaMelo Ball and his endless highlights, it is already a cultural shift.
At the start of the season Knueppel managed to prop up Charlotte while the injured Ball and Brandon Miller were out, and at the same time impressed Reggie Miller enough for him to gently bring up the idea that Kon might one day chase some of Steph Curry's records. There is a basis for such talk: Knueppel is the first player in NBA history to knock down 50 three-pointers over the first 15 games of his career.
Inside the locker room his contribution is just as obvious.
Miles Bridges puts it plainly, without embellishment:
"He is phenomenal. This year he looks like our best player. He is consistent and shows it every game, every day. That is who he is, and that is why it is so easy and fun to play with him."
A little later Knueppel dragged the Hornets into overtime and then to a win over Toronto – one of the leaders in the East. For a rookie who has only just arrived in the league, that is no longer about "cute flashes", it is about consistency.
A Sharpshooter From Duke: Narrow Role, Maximum Efficiency
If you go back a year and look at Knueppel's numbers at Duke, it becomes obvious that his current breakthrough is not a random spike. In terms of raw production he was not that far off Cooper Flagg; the key differences were really shot volume (13.4 attempts per game for Flagg versus 9.7 for Con) and the breadth of their roles.
Flagg, whom Dallas even experimented with at point guard, has always been the more versatile one: he handled the ball more, distributed, attacked the glass more often and accepted the risk of turnovers. Knueppel, by contrast, is a classic specialist. His element is sniping from beyond the arc, running off screens and attacking in long, deliberate drives with precise finishes.
In the NCAA he hit 40.6% from three on 5.3 attempts per game. In the NBA he is essentially doing the same thing at a higher difficulty setting: 8.4 threes per game at about 41% accuracy. He did not need a long "adaptation period", system fine-tuning or bug-fixing patches – he just checked in and started producing, as if he had been coded specifically for NBA requirements.
It is too early to say that Knueppel is a future franchise player you can unquestioningly build a club around. But it is already clear that he can become one of the foundational pieces if Charlotte's front office really chooses to refresh the core instead of continuing to bet on Ball, for whom a new Lambo and fresh LV boots on his feet sometimes seem more important than the standings.
For Con, basketball is not background noise for a lifestyle; it is part of his worldview.
Faith, Order And The Jumper: How Family And Religion Shaped Knueppel's Style
The German proverb Ordnung ist das halbe Leben – "order is half of life" – does not hang in the Knueppel household as a generic poster; it functions as a personal motto. Con's great-grandfather was German, moved to the United States and became a Christian pastor. His ministry became not just a profession but the center of several generations' lives – both in terms of faith and in terms of discipline.
Kon grew up in that environment of "order and religion" alongside his four brothers – Kager, Kinston, Cash and Kidman. The family tradition of giving all the sons names starting with "K" is a cute detail, but something else matters more: in the Knueppel home basketball was for a long time not just a game but a tool of upbringing. Through practices the children were taught patience, self-control and how to wait for their moment.
The head of the family and his wife were excellent players themselves: the father was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Wisconsin Lutheran College basketball program, and the mother for many years remained the leading scorer in the history of the Wisconsin-Green Bay program. On top of that, the father and his brothers played in one of the oldest streetball tournaments in the United States – the Gus Macker 3-on-3 – on a team with the telling name "Flying Knueppel Brothers".
It is no surprise that Kon himself, speaking on the Non-Microwaved Truth podcast, describes basketball and faith as a family relay: he is convinced that God wants to see Christians who do not just declare their values, but pass them on to their children through concrete actions.
Reading the Bible is as much a part of Knueppel's daily routine as shooting practice. First it was at the Lutheran high school in Wisconsin, then at Duke, and now at the NBA level.
His favorite biblical figure, apart from Jesus, is Job. The story of a man who endures sickness, loss, pressure and constant suggestions to renounce his faith yet remains steadfast is an ideal model for an athlete who spent the entire pre-draft spring being criticized for not being tall enough for a small forward, lacking in athleticism and having poor lateral quickness.
Knueppel has never claimed the role of Vince Carter's heir. The real question was different: could he maximize his own strengths – shooting accuracy, smart positioning, movement without the ball and the ability to make decisions in fractions of a second? Judging by how seamlessly he already fits into the NBA, the answer so far sounds like a steady "yes".
Numbers Don't Lie: Knueppel's Value In Advanced Metrics
If you step away from the feel-good stories and look at the Hornets through the lens of advanced metrics, the picture around Knueppel only gets stronger. According to Cleaning the Glass, with him on the floor the team scores 3.8 points more than its opponents per 100 possessions. For a perimeter rookie, that is an extremely weighty argument.
Even more important is how he affects the other rookie starters – Sion James and Ryan Kalkbrenner. With that trio on the court, the Hornets are +2.3 points per 100 possessions. For a club that has spent years living in a state of chronic losing, that is a small revolution.
There are not that many examples in NBA history of multiple rookies being inserted into the starting lineup and instantly changing the shape of a team's game. One of the closest analogues is the 1997–98 Cleveland team, where Brevin Knight, Derek Anderson, Cedric Henderson and Žydrūnas Ilgauskas all started together. With the help of the remaining pieces of prime Shawn Kemp and workhorses like Wesley Person and Vitaly Potapenko, that group dragged the Cavs into the playoffs.
At the time some might have called that a modest accomplishment, but for Charlotte, which has not seen the playoffs in nine years, even a similar scenario would now look like a long-awaited miracle.
Kon Or LaMelo: Who Will The Hornets' Future Choose
There is a growing sense that Knueppel has landed in the right place at the right time. The organization has reached a crossroads: should it keep building its marketing around LaMelo Ball, turning every game into a content-driven show, or try to reboot the project around a young core that not only looks good but actually changes the scoreboard?
Insider Jake Fischer has already reported that within the club they want first to see what the new trio looks like alongside Brandon Miller, and only then sit down to discuss a possible Ball trade. And that makes sense: the American league system has long been geared not only toward results but also toward revenue – teams can spend years at the bottom of the standings as long as the gate and media interest do not fall off.
Ball fit this model perfectly: a favorite of young fans, a walking attraction, a clip-making machine who can turn even his own mistakes into content. But any trick relies on the effect of novelty, and that, it seems, is starting to wear off.
The attendance figures speak for themselves:
- in LaMelo's rookie year the Hornets ranked 9th in the league in attendance;
- a season later they had dropped to 14th;
- then they plunged to 23rd and have continued trending downward;
- in the 2023/24 campaign the club finished dead last in the attendance table.
The "LaMelo effect" has deflated – it is still easy to watch his highlights online, but fans are willing to pay for tickets either to see big wins or to feel part of something new and promising.
Knueppel and his peers are precisely the ones who can give Charlotte a chance to launch a new story – both on the floor and in the marketing department.
A Young Sharpshooter, A Grown-Up Faith And A Chance For The City
To fully convince the club and the fan base, Knueppel needs a next step – the Rookie of the Year award. In 2021 it was LaMelo Ball who took it home, and for a long time that trophy served as a symbol of the franchise's hopes for a brighter future. If the same award now goes to Con, it will be yet another argument that the time has truly come to change the team's leading face.
For Charlotte this is a chance not just to change the sign on the door but to genuinely relaunch a project that has spent far too long in the shadows. For Knueppel himself it is an opportunity to turn his blend of soft shooting touch, family tradition and deep faith into the foundation of a major basketball journey.
And perhaps somewhere in North Carolina there is already a church where Hornets fans are ready to light a candle for the rookie who looks shy but is remarkably mature – the one who launches three-pointers as if he were saying a prayer, calmly, confidently and believing in the result all the way through.
