The Charlotte Hornets’ win over the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday was far from perfect but showed how exciting and dynamic they can be when healthy. As usual, Kon Knueppel helped lead the way on offense. He also proved with his composed post-game statements how fortunate the Hornets are to have drafted him this past summer.
Understandably, much of the discourse after the contest revolved around the team's historic first half, in which it scored 80 points and sank an NBA-record 18 3-pointers. It also finished the evening with 20 fast-break points (17 before the intermission) and assisting on 39 of its 49 field-goal makes.
When Knueppel was asked about the Hornets’ remarkable offensive showing, he replied, “Yeah, I just think we got great shot quality, just playing fast, getting those pass-aheads, passes across in transition. We knew that coming in that would be a big, big source of points for us. But also just sharing it. We made a lot of extra passes, passing up good, good shots for great shots. And that leads to a higher percentage.”
Clearly, the former Duke University star recognizes how the offense of this iteration of Charlotte can click. In many of the team’s losses, though, its scoring has been putrid. That reality has resulted in the Hornets ranking just 19th in average points entering their Thursday tiff.
There was no such problem for them against Atlanta, except in the second half, when they put up just 53 points and nearly allowed the opponent to rally for a comeback win.
A streaking Kon Knueppel
It’s also worth noting that Knueppel, who recently experienced a mini-slump, currently has the hot hand, as his previous two games saw him average 31.0 points per contest on 57.5 percent shooting. He continued the trend with 28 points on a 10-17 shooting clip (58.8 percent) on Thursday.
For the season, he has recorded 19.0 points per match, which leads all rookies, and his shooting splits of 48-41-92 have been unmatched by any of his draft classmates.
Hornets coach Charles Lee is highly impressed. He recalled the time and effort the players he had worked with during his assistant coaching stints with the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics put into achieving high field-goal percentages. But Knueppel has been notably efficient despite having only 27 professional appearances on his resume.
The good news for Charlotte — and the bad news for the rest of the league — is that Knueppel is only going to get better. He has already attracted the attention of defenses, yet he continues to shoot light out from the field on most nights. Once he gets used to the speed of the NBA game even more and is able to play with a stronger Hornets roster, he should only see his numbers go up even more.
Knueppel has already captured the hearts of many, if not all, of the Hornets faithful. It’s only a matter of time before he gets the national attention he has proven deserving of.