Kon Knueppel in the win against Mavericks: 34 PTS, 4 REB, 3 AST, 1 STL, 8-12 3P
Kon Knueppel in the win against Mavericks: 34 PTS, 4 REB, 3 AST, 1 STL, 0 TOV, 10-16 FG, 8-12 3P, 6-6 FT, +7 36 MIN
LaMelo Ball 22/3/9/1
https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401810538
Absolute culture changer
He’s having a historical rookie scoring year when factoring in efficiency
This dude is averaging nearly 20 points a game on 64 TS%. That’s almost unheard of
We have one rookie who’s sniffing the 50/40/90 club and another (kalkbrenner) who might break the single season fg% record
wtf is going on here idk what this is
You guys have a SQUAD on your hands
I’m With Koko.
White boys MJ always dreamed of.
Ur roster is actually deadly when healthy
I think the starting line up is 11-1 this year.
Still had those injuries to start the year. Finally get to see them all together.
This January is probably the best month of hornets bball ever.
While taking a large volume of 3’s.
That’s kinda why the TS% is so high. Still impressive that his shot has translated so well to NBA distance, but this is gonna become more and more common as kids are learning how to play ball in the 3 point era.
-people who don’t understand how ts% is calculated
Some chart showed he’s the 5th best shooter in the league in terms of efficiency
Who were the others?
All-time great rookie year. It’s a shame he will likely lose ROY to Flagg but all 3 of Flagg/Kon/VJ should be remembered for insane rookie seasons
There is probably some of this happening but a lot of it is that we actually have five good basketball players now. The team stinks the moment we put our bench in lol.
There’s some good bench pieces but overall it’s very obvious that it’s still pieced together from what we could get while piling up picks.
He’s got a funny name imo
Is his last name actually pronounced “nipple”? That’s how I’ve heard some announcers say it.
its pronounced “Cuh Nipple”
This guy could be the next generational shooter after curry. But it will be impossible to replicate the curry gap. Curry is just that far ahead compared to other players in his time. Curry could be the shaq of shooting, kon could be the giannis of shooting and I will still call it a bug success.
Kulture Khanger
is he better than Miller?
Right this second, no, Miller has been incredible lately.
Both him and cooper are unreal. what a game
They’re both insane competitors, it was obvious they were both gonna go nuts tonight but this was just different lmfao.
“These white men are dangerous!”
Both going to be awesome players for a long time
Can Kon and Cooper share the award?
It’s been done before, hasn’t it?
Jason Kidd and Grant Hill (1994-95) and Elton Brand and Steve Francis (1999-2000)
EDIT: Also Dave Cowens and Geoff Petrie in the early 70s
Today I learned …
Weird nba trivia was my lifeblood as a child
So it’s possible. If they continue doing what they’re doing this year. They deserve to both win it.
Kon is playing extemely well but Flagg is setting records
Lol so a Duke player sharing this award (let alone 2) would be very fitting
Carmelo should have shared it in 03-04 if that’s the case.
Actually played the b2b too
Those bitches really sat a 19 yo on the front end of the b2b just to let him be fresh af so he could pop off on his roty competition at home. You could tell our legs were going in that second half.
Cooper has been dealing with an ankle sprain, which was the other reason they rested him
Yea notice he cooled off late because he played the entire 3rd quarter
He has an ankle injury dawg. He dropped 49 on you with a bum ankle lmao
Sure bud, looked real injured
Maybe he has a hurt ankle. Everyone has a hurt something in pro sports. He ain’t injured though.
Just fell to my knees in the Krispy Kreme
Just fell to my knees in the bojangles
Just fell to my knees in Cook Out
ROY
Ez
I personally feel Cooper is better.
Eh
Whoever wins it is deserving. Whoever loses it would have won in almost any other year (including giving Wemby a challenge)
Flagg would have taken it from wenby more easily than it will be taken from Kon.
accept it
I thought he was coming for Klay’s made threes in a game record. That third quarter was silly.
What a game. Coop and Kon having their best games yet, against each other, came right down to the end with Kon getting the winning FTs. Coop so close to a clean block. Both are going to be absolutely incredible players.
That was a clean block
He pushed him from behind before the shot. The block itself was clean
Soft ending to that game
He gets him with the body before he gets the ball. There’s definitely worse that isn’t called, but it was 100% a foul.
A jump ball with 4 to shoot would have been funny though.
Kon is HIM
Hot take - I like watching Kon play more than Cooper. What a play at the end
Insane to double blitz at the end like that
Same.
Kon Knueppel is an All-Star. I think it’s insane he’s not seriously being considered as one for the East. He’s the Hornets’ best player and the clear ROY. Let’s stop the slander.
Brandon Miller is the Hornets best player but Kon has been awesome as well
No, Miller is their best one-on-one isolation scorer. He’s played a lot better in January, but he was also pretty mediocre in November and December. He’s a pretty interesting talent. I just worry he doesn’t have the BBIQ to really be who you want as your primary perimeter scorer. He has too much Brandon Ingram in his game for me.
He was injured in November and took time to work his way back. He’s the best player on the team right now. Maybe Kon passes him but who knows. He’s so much harder to stop than Kon with the ball in his hands and when the team needs a bucket, he gets it.
Yeah, I realize that. Those games still count, though. Knueppel has been consistently great all year. Consistency matters. Having a higher peak doesn’t mean you’re the best player. You’re overrating isolation scoring, which is fine. All casual fans do.
[removed]
Just because you watch a lot of games doesn’t make you not a casual fan. Just look at what you’re overrating: isolation scoring. I’m not going to argue with someone who’s perspective I don’t respect. I just straight up don’t respect how you see the game. I’m blunt, dude. Sorry not sorry. Downvote and move on.
Do you watch basketball as your job or something lmao
Miller and LaMelo are def still ahead. Kon plays best off ball from melo too and can’t make his own space to get a shot off yet.
Idk how you can say that when the person he’s competing with had 15 more points than him
It’s almost like there’s more to the game than simply scoring points.
Like defense? Which Cooper is massively superior at? Other than shooting what is Kon better than Cooper at?
like defense? Right? Right?
I don’t get your point? Flagg does everything else better other than shooting efficiency no?
Edit: I’m actually getting downvoted for this take lmao.. you can literally use this game as evidence
You’re massively underselling how efficient Kon is though, especially as a rookie. On current stats he’s literally the most efficient shooting rookie of all time by a significant margin.
I’m not underselling it at all, it’s genuinely amazing what he’s doing and I wish my team drafted him.
The comment I’m replying to is still stupid, you can’t use “there’s more to the game than scoring” when arguing for someone who quite literally does less in every statistical category outside of shooting and is also a worse defender than Flagg
Coops not really a better playmaker or rebounder though.
Kons pretty easily the better passer. Kons averaging 3 potential assist/minute Coop at 1.9. Their raw assist numbers are virtually the same despite coop being on ball way more.
They’re basically identical at rebounding, Coops a little better on the offensive glass. Their contest numbers are very similar and Coops has Kon beat on stocks.
And obviously Kon is blowing him out of the water on efficiency.
So tell us what’s more to it genius.
I like Cooper Flagg, however Kon has been averaging almost 20 on 64% true shooting, which is unheard of for a 20 year-old rookie and shooting 43% from three that’s ridiculous.
It’s a white boy summer
Hornets nailed that pick. Its a nice feeling knowing you have a stud like this in his rookie year
Monster
He’s a sharpshooter for sure
Great player
At this point, I don’t think you can be mad if either Kon or Flagg win ROTY. Both of them are amazing and franchise changers.
NBA talent from WI has never been better
Kon, Herro, Jalen Johnson, Haliburton, Podziemski, Jordan Poole, Sam Hauser
In the 3rd quarter after he had hit 3 straight 3s, he came down and instead of shooting another 3 got moussa an easy layup. 99% of guys are taking that heat check, I absolutely love this kid.
We’re gonna be looking back at this rookie class like 2003’s one day lmao
Coop has big highlights on both ends, but Kon is literally one of the greatest shooting rookies of all time. I can see why Coop would get ROTY but man maybe they can split it
For those wondering why I have Knueppel as the hands-down ROY over Flagg at this point:
The gap in shooting efficiency between Knueppel and Flagg is Grand Canyon-sized: 63.7% TS for Knueppel, 55% for Flagg. Knueppel is literally one of the most efficient offensive players in the NBA. Flagg is very good for a rookie but still comfortably below the league average. Considering shooting efficiency is 40% of the game (Four Factors), being far better in the most important part of the game is a huge gap to overcome.
Is Flagg better at other parts of the game enough to make up for that? No, I don’t think so. Defensively, Flagg hasn’t been very good. I saw what I could of today’s game and he was pretty awful, frankly. Wasn’t even trying. I haven’t seen enough of Knueppel defensively to say either way. But again, we would need a massive, yawning gap in favor of Flagg to make up for the offensive efficiency difference. And it’s extraordinarily unlikely that’s the case.
Finally, here’s another key part in Knueppel’s favor that most people ignore, because we don’t have very many stats to quantify it, and because watching casually doesn’t particularly help you evaluate it: spacing. Because Knueppel is one of the best shooters in the NBA (almost 8 per game at over 42%), he’s one of the best spacers in the NBA. Flagg is one of the worst 3-point shooters in the NBA (28% on 3.5 per game). This further magnifies Knueppel’s offensive advantage over Flagg quite a bit.
kon has melo, brandon miller, and bridges to set the offense for him.
coop has had AD for half the season (who can’t even set up offense for him) and kyrie out for the entire season so far. coop is always setting his own offense, something kon doesn’t need to worry that much about.
hornets had to start doubling coop and face guarding him to deny the ball or he might’ve dropped a 60 bomb on them. the gap is not that great, kon is just in a noticeably better offensive system.
There’s a fundamental thing about offensive efficiency that most people just don’t grasp: there is not a strict linear relationship between a player’s efficiency and the offensive talent around them.
John Hollinger wrote an article about this well over a decade ago, so I can’t find it. Other sabermetricians have also talked about it. You can look into it yourself, though, and see. Anyway, a player’s efficiency in smaller sample sizes/smaller amount of minutes per game tends to remain more constant than not even in larger sample sizes/more minutes per game. This principle is why Morey locked on to Harden and traded so much (at the time) to acquire him when he became available.
How does this translate to here? Well, Miles Bridges, LaMelo, and Brandon Miller are talented offensive players, but they aren’t actually efficient offensive players. So Knueppel’s incredible offensive efficiency – driven by his great shooting – is much more independent on his own skill than dependent on the aforementioned players helping him become efficient.
Furthermore, being a great shooter scales far better for great teams than being a good perimeter creator does. In other words, Knueppel’s skill set makes your team construction have a much higher ceiling, on average, than Flagg’s perimeter creation ability. This only stops becoming true if the perimeter creator is able to create at an elite level in both usage and efficiency. And, typically, the only way to create at an elite level is to be a decidedly above-average shooter. Otherwise, as soon as you are paired with a typical second star, the sum becomes worse than the parts.
So unless Flagg becomes a truly great perimeter creator, which he certainly is live to do but is by no means a guarantee, what you are arguing is an advantage for him is actually a disadvantage.
Knueppel’s great shooting means he spaces the floor, means he creates more value for Bridges/LaMelo/Miller simply by being on the floor. Those guys do not create more value for him (except for LaMelo’s passing) simply by being on the floor. They only create more value for his game when their shot is actually falling, because they are negatives in every other respect of their games.
kon absolutely has more space to shoot because of them tho. teams aren’t gonna sell out to blitz kon off of screens because you just give the other three guys too many open looks.
if kon had considerably worse offensive players around him, teams would scheme to double him off ball.
Well, duh, but you’re just not fully comprehending what I’m saying.
Anyway, nobody cares about Miles Bridges. He’s an empty stats chucker. He is improving from playing with Kon. Not Kon from playing with him. You think it’s a coincidence Kon arrives and he’s suddenly having his most efficient season?
Two, Miller and LaMelo have been injured quite a bit this season and Kon hasn’t missed a beat. So if what you’re saying was true, we would’ve seen it.
His shooting touch was elite, but his shots started falling short later on, probably due to fatigue. I think he would’ve played even better if it wasn’t a B2B.
ROTY
How did Duke not win the national title last year? lol
Because Kon should’ve got the ball in clutch time over Flagg.
Bro I’m pretty sure Duke scored like 2 FGs in the last 10 minutes lol
florida went crazy and clamped them it has nothing to do with flagg getting the ball lol go rewatch that game dude that got drafted by the jazz was absurd that game
KING KON BABY
I think he should be ROTY, he perfectly encapsulates the evolution of Basketball with 3point efficiency
This kid is going to be breaking every 3pt record at this rate if he’s literally starting with an efficiency and shot volume beyond Curry and Ant even
Is Kon/Brandon/Lamelo the next Tatum/Jaylen/Kyrie?
Steph/Klay/Durant
That’s putting a lot of pressure on yourselves.
fuck they putting in the water in charlotte
cheerwine
Is he Larry Bird?
I doubted the pick but nah this kid is the real deal Hornets got a really good one
Wish they could get co roty but I see no shot cooper loses it after tonight.
Game of the year
He way ahead of steph’s pace. Watch out
He ain’t ever passing Curry as the greatest long range shooter the game has seen.
Shooting 42% on 8 attempts per game is a nice start
I know it’s hindsight but imagine Spurs got him at #2. Would fix our only flaw and be a serious contender
One of the rare instances BPA prolly wasn’t the best call
Hornets are finally exiting NBA purgatory
Kon ROTY idc what anybody tells me.
Coulda gotten college championship
How the fuck didn’t Duke win last year
Kid’s an absolute flamethrower from 3.
!!!!!!!! Nnnnnbrjrjdjkdnfnf
great runner up for roty!! shooting is so elite
Pretty good runner up ROTY, insane game
L