{"id":760487,"date":"2026-06-14T02:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/760487\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T02:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:45:16","slug":"charlotte-hornets-2025-26-player-grades-kon-knueppel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/760487\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlotte Hornets 2025-26 player grades: Kon Knueppel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite falling out of the top three in last year’s 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, the Charlotte Hornets<\/a> were still able to scoop up a tremendous talent with the No. 4 overall selection, former Duke guard Kon Knueppel<\/a>. Although some expected Knueppel to contribute right away, no one anticipated his breakout season, narrowly falling short of NBA Rookie of the Year Award honors to his former college roommate, Cooper Flagg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, Knueppel played 81 games, making 80 starts and averaging 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 0.7 steals. He neared 50\/40\/90 efficiency, shooting 47.5% from the field, 42.5% from 3-point range and 86.3% from the free-throw line. The Milwaukee<\/a> native led the league in 3-pointers, breaking the rookie record<\/a> for made 3-pointers as well. Knueppel also became the third rookie in NBA history<\/a> to average 15 or more points and five or more rebounds while shooting above 40% from beyond the arc. All in all, compared to expectations, Knueppel couldn’t have been much better.<\/p>\n

Overall grade: A+<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Rookie Wire: Hornets 2025-26 player grades: Kon Knueppel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite falling out of the top three in last year’s 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, the Charlotte Hornets were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3777],"tags":[7,684,473,3878,225,685,968,102,6,249],"class_list":["post-760487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-charlotte-hornets","tag-basketball","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-charlottehornets","tag-cooper-flagg","tag-hornets","tag-kon-knueppel","tag-milwaukee","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft-lottery"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116746172758762323","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}