The legend of Kon Knueppel: An inside look at life for Charlotte’s newest star
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- At age 20, the Charlotte Hornets’ Kon Knueppel leads NBA in made 3-pointers as a rookie.
- Knueppel’s formative years were spent in Milwaukee as the oldest of five brothers.
- Knueppel has spurred Hornets’ surprising resurgence; is in close Rookie of the Year race.
Long before he led the NBA in 3-pointers made as a rookie, before he scored 85 points in a single game as a teenager in Milwaukee, before the Charlotte Hornets or Duke Blue Devils had even heard of him, Kon Knueppel was a bespectacled kindergartner just starting to play basketball.
He didn’t like it one bit.
In his first season of organized hoops, at 5 years old, Knueppel didn’t score. Not just in one game — for the entire season. On the rare occasions a teammate passed him the ball, Knueppel would duck and let the ball skitter out of bounds.
“Dad, I just don’t like sports,” he told his father.
This wasn’t an ideal scenario for Kon’s parents. Kon Knueppel I and Chari Nordgaard Knueppel were both small college basketball stars. Kon I was a deadly outside shooter and passer who finished his career as the all-time leading scorer at Wisconsin Lutheran, which inducted him into its hall of fame. Chari was a 6-foot-1 post player who finished her career as the all-time leading scorer at Green Bay, which inducted her into its hall of fame.
Kon II— his middle name is literally the Roman numeral II — was something of an enigma to them. The eldest of five brothers born in a 5½-year span, he was an old soul from the start. He liked eavesdropping on adult conversations. His favorite movie was — and remains — 1987’s “The Princess Bride.” But basketball? No thanks.
Said Chari Nordgaard Knueppel, recalling those years: “We were — I’m not going to say devastated — but ‘worried’ maybe is the word. So we were trying everything to get him interested in something.”
Martial arts didn’t work. Other sports didn’t stick. By now Kon Knueppel was 6, and he and his younger brothers really wanted a Nintendo Wii inside their home in Milwaukee so they could play video games.
“We had always tried not to have electronics in the house,” Nordgaard Knueppel said. “I thought it would ruin the kids and melt their minds, and they wouldn’t be playing real sports or games anymore, right? Because they would just want to do the electronics.”
But the boys wore their parents down, as will happen, and eventually there was a Wii in the house. “NBA Jam” became a favorite among the Knueppel boys, who all sport “K” names (Kager, Kinston, Kash and Kidman) just as Kon I’s siblings do.
One day Kon’s mother walked by and heard her son narrating the action to himself: “David Robinson passes it to Tim Duncan …”
Kon Knueppel’s interest had sparked. NBA Jam became not a mind-melter, but a learning tool. Suddenly, he started to like basketball. And now he is a prime candidate to win NBA Rookie of the Year with one of the most surprising teams in the entire league — the Charlotte Hornets.
‘He’s a killer’
The Hornets won a total of 40 games in the two years before Knueppel became their No. 4 overall pick out of Duke in the 2025 NBA Draft. They were normally injured, inferior and underachieving. April, a season of hope for many, was always a month of despair for them. Charlotte hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016 — the longest active streak in the NBA. But with two games remaining in the regular season after Tuesday night’s 113-102 loss to Boston, the Hornets (43-37) are ninth in the Eastern Conference and headed to either the play-in tournament or the playoffs outright.
Not yet able to buy an alcoholic drink, Knueppel is only 20 years old. But he has been a massive part of the resurgence.
“He’s a killer,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said.
As for why he would call a baby-faced 20-year-old a killer, Lee explained it like this: “There are possessions where other teams want to pick on him. They think that he’s the weakest link on our defense. And he just ends up absorbing contact because he’s so strong. As soon as they try to drive him, he’s great with his instincts, and he’ll hook the ball away from you. And as soon as the ball’s away from you, he’s going to dive through your legs, through your chest — whatever he’s got to do to get the ball.”
His first name lends itself to signs that you sometimes see dotting the sold-out stands at Spectrum Center: “The Wrath of Khan” and “Kon Artistry.”
His last name is German. You pronounce the “K” and it rhymes with “triple,” which is fitting since Knueppel leads the NBA in 3-pointers made, with 268, making them at a 42.9% clip. He has already set the Hornets’ single-season record for threes and, if he can hold off teammate LaMelo Ball (2nd in the NBA, with 261) over the final two games, he will become the first rookie in NBA history to lead the league in that category.
“He’s shooting better in the NBA than he did for us in college,” marveled Chris Carrawell, Duke’s associate head coach.
The Rookie of the Year contest is a neck-and-neck, two-man race, between Knueppel and his old Duke roommate Cooper Flagg, who was the No. 1 overall pick for the Dallas Mavericks in 2025. Flagg averages slightly more points per contest (21.1 to 18.7) and had a recent 51-point game that garnered a lot of attention.
Dallas, though, is a team in disarray: The Mavericks had 39 wins a season ago but won’t reach 30 with Flagg this season. The Hornets, meanwhile, have more than doubled their previous season’s win total (19) with Knueppel, who has won Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month four times. The Rookie of the Year award, voted on by a panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters, will be announced early in the postseason.
“Kon is the rookie of the year,” Lee said. “It’s a very talented class. But Kon has done a phenomenal job of helping an organization elevate as fast as we have.”
Or as the Charlotte-based rapper DaBaby said at a recent game, annoyed at a fellow fan who during warmups had thrown a loose ball high into the air, hitting Knueppel in the head and startling him: “Kon, you good bro?!” And then: “Hey, let’s get this (guy) outta here, man. Time to go. He done hit the rookie of the year with the ball!”
The ‘Closed Gyms League’
Knueppel’s basketball education had a lot of steps: the typical ones of school teams, travel teams and high-level basketball camps among them. Nothing was more essential, however, than the obscure “Closed Gyms League” of Milwaukee.
The league was started by Kon Knueppel I, who after his college career became a counselor for Milwaukee’s public schools. He still had the itch to compete, however, and began inviting other local players he knew and liked to play with in “open gym” formats around the city.
After a while, someone mentioned to Kon I that an invite-only gym wasn’t an open gym, but a closed gym. That phrase morphed into “Closed Gyms League,” or CGL, which has been a mainstay in the family’s life for more than two decades. Kon I is the league’s organizer and, at age 50, its oldest active player. Several sessions occur every year. In the current session — the 73rd — Kon I is still averaging 32 points per game, while two of Kon’s younger brothers are also averaging in the 30s.
“My dad’s been doing that now for 20 years,” Kon II said. “There are stats and everything. It’s great.”
The league, composed mostly of former college players, starts each session with a draft to keep the teams even. The games are 48 minutes long, as in the NBA. There is a scorer and someone to run the clock — often a member of the Knueppel family.
But there are no officials. Instead, there’s an honor system, with players calling their own fouls.
“It’s run like a real game,” Kon I said. “If you call a foul on a shot, you get two free throws. So everything looks like a real game, just without terrible rec league referees. It works really well. I’ve had to kick a few guys out over the years for taking advantage (and calling too many fouls). But for the most parts, guys just acclimate.”
In the summer after his eighth grade year, Kon II was allowed to join CGL for the first time.
“I was terrible,” he said.
“Not terrible,” Kon I said. “But definitely a last-round draft pick.”
For the next four years, Kon II played in the league, often against men in their 20s, getting better and better. Toward the end, he was averaging close to 40 points. He once scored 85 in a single game.
“It definitely taught him how to play the right way,” Kon I said.
That was one important aspect of his basketball education. Another was the fact that he had a mother who knew the game and how to play it well.
Chari Nordgaard Knueppel ran an in-home day care for 20 years — she just retired from doing so. But before that, she was good enough to briefly play professionally and then work as a college assistant coach.
Said Jai Lucas, now the University of Miami’s head basketball coach but once a Duke assistant deeply involved in the Knueppel recruitment: “I’ve always had this theory with boys whose mom played high level basketball and who were really good, that their sons are going to be really good. Cooper Flagg, Paolo Banchero — exact same thing. If the mom can play, the son has a chance.”
‘I ain’t know he can jump like that’
The Hornets drafted Knueppel fourth overall in June 2025. Flagg was picked No. 1. Knueppel made a mark quickly, helping the Hornets win the NBA summer league. He missed one summer league game as an injury precaution — “he was furious with me,” Lee said — and his ability to play in the final game was in doubt because he had sustained a gash on his head that required stitches.
Persuading the coaches to let him play, Knueppel put a headband over the stitches and scored 21 points as Charlotte won a very rare championship, with Knueppel named MVP of the summer league title game in Las Vegas.
Once Knueppel got to training camp, his teammates saw that he was going to make the team better quickly. Said Hornets star point guard LaMelo Ball, when asked what had surprised him about the rookie early in camp: “I’m gonna go with the bounce, for real. I ain’t know he can jump like that. He even caught a few little dunks. I’m like hold on: I done seen ‘White Men Can’t Jump.’”
Some of his contributions were more intangible. Knueppel didn’t seem to know how to lollygag through a workout, even one of the early-morning shootarounds where NBA players are just waking up.
“I’ve been in the NBA awhile,” Lee said, “and shootarounds are usually those times where everybody’s like, walking through everything. Half-assing it. And he’s going 100 miles per hour. There’s a piece of me in the back of my mind saying: ‘Just slow down. I don’t need you to roll an ankle right now, fighting through one of these screens.’ But he always does it. To me, when one of your best players approaches things like that, it raises the standards for everyone.”
Knueppel’s bandwagon did get some early boarders. Prominent basketball podcaster Bill Simmons said before the season started: “I guarantee this guy is gonna actually be on the (U.S. Olympic basketball) team in 2028. That’s how strongly I feel about this person.”
Knueppel appreciated the sentiment, but not the timing.
“Simmons saying that — throwing a little pressure on a rookie before he even played a game — is kind of tough,” he said, laughing. “But obviously that’s something I’d really want to do.”
Knueppel’s “welcome to the NBA” moment came in Game 2 of the regular season, when he ran directly into a screen set by 6-11, 279-pound Philadelphia 76ers center Andre Drummond. Knueppel staggered, but didn’t fall.
“He’s a big dude,” Knueppel said. “It rang my bell a little bit.”
By Game 12, Knueppel was an integral part of the team. He was in the starting lineup but also carried the card table onto the team plane for each road trip as part of his rookie duties. (Ryan Kalkbrenner carries some of Grant Williams’ equipment for each trip; Sion James is responsible for making sure the UNO cards get on the plane.)
In November, Knueppel’s parents invited him and whomever else wanted to come to dinner on a free night before a game at Milwaukee.
“So he basically said he was going to invite the whole team,” Knueppel’s dad said. “Which was fine. But we were like, ‘Well, these are NBA guys. A few of the younger ones might come.’”
“Right,” Knueppel’s mother said. “Who’s going to want to go to the little rookie’s house?”
It turned out everyone did. The Hornets took the team bus to the Knueppel house to see where “Konnie,” as his mother usually calls him, grew up. His mom — whose real first name is “Charlotte,’” which has made the family wonder if some destiny was at play during the draft — made 25 pounds of fajitas and fixings. Kidman Knueppel tried to dunk on Ball on the family basketball goal.
Kon Knueppel would later recount this story on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in early December. By then, he was enough of a headliner to rate a national appearance.
Getting to — and staying — at Duke
Knueppel’s attendance at Duke was no sure thing. He wasn’t on the Blue Devils’ radar early in his high school career.
“I worked with Travis Diener for three years when I was at Marquette,” Carrawell said. “He was a legend playing for Marquette, and he trained Kon some. And he called me up one day and said, ‘Listen, I hate Duke. But there’s a guy here good enough to play at Duke.’ And that was Kon.”
On Diener’s recommendation, Carrawell checked Knueppel out. But the first time he saw him play, he wasn’t overly impressed.
“Hmm,” Carrawell thought. “He looks a little heavy.”
Knueppel turned out not to be in great shape because he was coming back from an ankle injury. He started playing better in various summer camps and Duke got interested. The Blue Devils found out their primary competition seemed to be Virginia and Marquette.
Then-Duke assistant Lucas, meanwhile, called up Knueppel’s mother. He recounted the conversation: “The first thing she said to me was, ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call. I got the perfect player for you.’ I’ll never forget it. It was a bold thing to say, and not something most mothers start a conversation with. But she turned out to be right.”
Since those early days playing “NBA Jam,” Knueppel has always had a fondness for basketball players who made the NBA but weren’t stars. Many of these were fairly obscure players who played at least a year with the Bucks, his hometown NBA team: Nate Wolters, John Salmons, Corey Maggette.
On his recruiting visit, Knueppel taught several members of the Duke basketball staff the niche basketball trivia game called “Immaculate Grid.”
“I introduced that to C-Well and (Duke head coach Jon) Scheyer,” Knueppel said. “They had never seen it before. I love anything like that, so we all had fun with it.”
Carrawell was astounded at Knueppel’s basketball knowledge.
“The guy can name every NCAA champion back through the 1950s,” he said. “NBA champions, too. He doesn’t just play the game. He loves the game.”
Knueppel committed to Duke on Sept. 21, 2023. When he showed up, he turned out to be better than almost anyone on the staff thought. At first, the coaches weren’t sure Knueppel would start, but that got settled quickly.
“He was better at everything than you expected him to be,” Lucas said.
Said Carrawell of Knueppel: “His first few months on campus we were like, ‘Well, he’s better than Cooper Flagg.’ And then we’d be like, ‘Nah, nah. That couldn’t be. But wait. Is he?’”
While all that was happening, however, Knueppel was desperately homesick. His high school girlfriend, Lauren, was a year younger and remained in Milwaukee. She now attends Marquette, and they remain in a committed long-distance relationship.
“The long-distance stuff was really hard for me at first,” Knueppel said. “I’ve got four younger brothers I’m very close to and want to be around. I have a lot of good friends, and every one of them went to college in Wisconsin. It was tough.”
From Durham, Knueppel would FaceTime the family in Milwaukee during breakfast, just to see everybody.
“It was very serious,” Nordgaard Knueppel said. “He was really, really homesick. It’s been reported that I was going to drive down and bring him home. That is incorrect. I was going to drive down and live there to make sure he stayed. I wasn’t letting him go home.”
That difficult period lasted from May to October 2024. The Knueppels went down to visit Kon several times. “He was struggling, and it was always hard to leave,” Nordgaard Knueppel said. “Because he was sad. And it’s hard to be sad while also pushing your body to the limit.”
By the time the season had started, Knueppel was playing well and had made friends. Flagg, Knueppel’s roommate, eventually became the team’s No. 1 option and the college player of the year.
But it was Knueppel who became the ACC Tournament MVP in Charlotte after Flagg got hurt. Duke made the 2025 Final Four before blowing a lead and getting upset by Houston in the national semifinal.
Knueppel was normally stoic on the court, as he is with the Hornets.
“I should probably smile a little bit more,” he said.
James, Knueppel’s teammate at Duke and now with Charlotte, said Knueppel’s consistency has always stood out.
“He’s one of my favorite people ever, because he’s the same guy every single day,” James said. “That makes him very reliable.”
James said Knueppel has only gotten angry with him once, in the heat of a Duke game when Knueppel had told James to immediately pass him the ball so he could get fouled, make the free throws and clinch it.
“I didn’t find him once, or at least not fast enough,” James said. “And he yelled at me. ‘C’mon, Sion, give me the ball!’ And I said, ‘I’m trying!’ But you can’t get mad at Kon. Whatever he says is always coming from a good place.”
Knueppel’s perfect day
Knueppel is nearing the end of his first NBA season, having made believers out of just about everyone.
In December, Michael Jordan was on a break from the trial where he had sued NASCAR when the conversation turned to basketball. Jordan, who used to be the Hornets’ majority owner and still has a small piece of the team, volunteered that he had been shocked by Knueppel.
“I had no idea he was that good,” Jordan said.
Has Knueppel surprised himself by leading the NBA in made 3-pointers as a rookie?
“Yes,” Knueppel said. “I didn’t think that would happen. I didn’t know the volume would be there; it takes a lot of shots to be able to do that. And a lot of teammates looking for you. But there have also been a lot of injuries to a lot of great shooters that has contributed to that, too.”
The Hornets have two regular-season games left, on Friday at home vs. Detroit and at the New York Knicks Sunday, followed by either a play-in spot or a playoff berth. He’s playing basketball the way we all think we would play if we happened to have made it to the NBA: Hustling for every loose ball, drilling corner threes, making the right pass at the right time.
Kon I put up a motivational poster on the wall at home in Milwaukee with a quote from Larry Bird: “It makes me sick when I see a guy just stare at a loose ball and watch it go out of bounds.”
That quote stuck with Kon II. Knueppel will still quote it today occasionally, along with “The Princess Bride” (he is fond of the “As you wish” quote, which in the movie is code for “I love you.”)
His perfect day at age 20?
“Not a game day,” Knueppel said, explaining that game days contain too much dead time. “I’d pick a practice day. Come in here, go get on the court for a little bit with the guys and then go home and hopefully somebody’s in town from back home.”
As for how far Knueppel can take his career, whether he becomes NBA Rookie of the Year or not, Hornets coach Lee believes he has a good sense for it.
“He is going to be one of the best players on this team for a very long time, and he’s going to help us have sustained success,” Lee said. “I can definitely see him being an all-star. And one day, Kon Knueppel is going to help us win an NBA championship.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The legend of Kon Knueppel: An inside look at life for Charlotte’s newest star."
