Summer League Primer: A Comprehensive Kon Knueppel Scouting Report

With Summer League action kicking off today, we are officially in the portion of the basketball calendar more rife with hot takes and over-reactions than any other time of year. Although we are only a few months removed from watching these rookies play in a structured basketball environment, Summer League tests even the most seasoned basketball fan’s discipline in withholding their judgments on the newest crop of NBA players. So, in the hope of providing some more substantial take-fuel for fans of the draft and Hornets alike, I wanted to delve into one of the most interesting prospects in the 2025 draft class, Kon Knueppel.

In the previous article I wrote analyzing Tre Johnson, I alluded to the changing perspective of front offices and fans alike regarding the draft. The 2024 cycle was an emphatic indication of the sea change in teams’ approach to the event. With players from Reed Sheppard to Zach Edey being selected with high picks, it became apparent that teams were prioritizing cerebral players with analytically sound profiles over those with traits more traditionally associated with high upside.

What drove me to write about Kon was how representative his journey was of this shifting dynamic. Widely recognized as a subpar athlete by NBA standards, due to the optics of Knueppel’s game, I doubt he would have ever been considered worthy of a top-5 pick even as recently as a decade ago. However, because of his stellar efficiency and deserved reputation as an intelligent player, the Hornets’ selection of Knueppel was seen as a no-brainer.

My intent with writing this piece was to figure out one thing: has the pendulum swung too far? At what point is it acceptable to go against conventional draft logic and select a player whose deficiencies would have been considered disqualifying in previous eras? By investigating both contextual and individual statistics, in tandem with tape dating back 2 years, I found myself in firm disagreement with the direction the Hornets ultimately went in.

The Beginning

Standing slightly over 6’6 in shoes with a 6’6.25″ wingspan, Kon Knueppel may have left this draft with the highest approval rating of any non-Cooper Flagg prospect. Knueppel’s playstyle eschewed norms typically associated with star level production, he relied on technique and guile in lieu of dynamic physical traits. His fundamentally sound game, paired with an inscrutable demeanor, and an overwhelming amount of team success quickly earned Knueppel fans. And Kon would finish with one of the most impressive underclassman seasons from a perimeter player in recent memory, inserting himself into the group below along with fellow one-and-done Jase Richardson.

What makes Kon such a compelling case study isn’t just his ascension from fringe top-40 recruit at the beginning of his final AAU campaign, to top-5 draft pick 2 years later, but the rapid and tangible development he made in that span.

To gain a complete understanding of Kon’s game we must begin with his time spent on the grassroots circuit. Knueppel’s scoring and scoring efficiency have remained constants over the course of his career, having led his EYBL age group in scoring for 3 consecutive years and never once dipped under 60% True Shooting. However, outside of the high-volume flamethrowing from deep, Knueppel’s utilization at Duke held a faint resemblance to his time playing AAU.

During Kon’s time playing his AAU team, Phenom University, he served as the focal point of a motion offense. PhenomU would run concepts broadly similar to Duke, but with drastically different objectives. PhenomU frequently schemed looks for Knueppel to post-up in the middle of the floor, where his combination of size, strength, and touch were enough to overwhelm opponents at the high-school level. Actions like ‘Cross Punch’..

Outside of these schemed looks Knueppel was the frequent recipient of opportunistic buckets made possible by the Motion Offense and the miscommunication it brought about in opposing defenses.

And although these principles aren’t incompatible with quality offense at the collegiate or professional level, they did leave Knueppel unrefined in certain areas which became significantly more relevant during his time at Duke. One example would be Kon’s relative inefficiency attacking closeouts, where he was comfortable settling for short range jumpers and would seldom applied pressure on the rim.

Starting at Duke

Kon’s shift in usage once arriving at Duke was abrupt and apparent, the aforementioned post-ups and cuts were largely replaced with PNR ballhandling reps, as evinced below.

And for someone who came into the season a vocal proponent of Kon, frankly, the beginning of his Duke career was largely underwhelming. Duke almost exclusively schemed two plays for Knueppel, the first of which being ‘Zipper Stagger PNR‘, which exposed his inexperience operating out of ballscreens,

and the second play which comprised the majority of Knueppel’s organized offense was ‘Pin Ricky Flare‘, where again Knueppel struggled to generate quality looks if he wasn’t provided the requisite space to attempt a 3.

There definitely wasn’t a singular culprit behind Knueppel’s ineffectiveness as a driver, but the most obvious contributing factor was the misalignment between Duke’s offensive approach and Knueppel’s habits inside the arc. As previously mentioned, when Kon was ran off the 3-point line in highschool he expressed no urgency in getting to the rim, and was perfectly content with taking longer 2PA. Duke was the first setting where this characteristic of Knueppel’s game was met with resistance. In Jon Scheyer’s short time at the helm, an early emphasis he has made known is his desire for his teams to maintain a modern shot profile. In every subsequent year of Scheyer’s tenure, Duke has reduced their volume of midrange attempts.

The clash between the playstyle Scheyer had implemented within his team, and Knueppel’s personal style of play lead to ugly moments early on. With Knueppel’s ballhandling skills being fairly underdeveloped for his new, more perimeter oriented role, Kon attempted to rely on his physicality on create space and find finishing windows on drives. Knueppel’s forays towards the rim often lacked pace, and oftentimes Kon would over-penetrate and place himself in compromising positions inside the paint.

At roughly the halfway mark of the season, Knueppel’s statistical profile was far from the stellar marks he would finish the season with.

The Transformation

The defining change in Kon’s game this past season was undoubtedly his ability and effectiveness getting to the rim. Not only did his rim-rate increase by 8% from his final season of AAU to this past season, the complexion of these rim attempts also radically changed. Hand-tracking Knueppel’s rim-finishes reveals a player progressing from a forward to an out and out guard.

Knueppel having his playtype distribution significantly altered, while being forced to largely abandon his most reliable interior counters, AND STILL maintaining the efficiency he’d displayed at previous levels is borderline miraculous. And the catalyst for this improvement were the gains Knueppel made as a ballhandler.

While I still wouldn’t view Knueppel as an elite ballhandler by any means, the strides he made in this area, in conjunction with his physicality, made him a potent driver by season’s end.

For large swaths of the season, Knueppel’s inability to handle ball pressure or digs on his drives consistently prevented him from creating quality paint touches.

And I have a theory as to what was behind Knueppel’s leap as a ballhandler and driver. Kon seems to have married the technical gains he made, specifically developing better ball-control and an improvement altering ball-speeds, with the strong footwork foundation he already possessed from all the years spent playing out of the post. Post footwork translating to other facets of the game is an axiom espoused by coaches everywhere, and Knueppel seems to be the most recent testament to this. As the season progressed Knueppel was more capable of keeping his dribble alive inside the arc, making him a more potent scorer and playmaker.

Towards the end of the season, Knueppel started to thrive in the same actions that he’d previously been out of his depth in. Below is a succession of ‘Zipper Stagger PNR‘ plays conducted sublimely by Kon. Even when he isn’t able to finish the play with a basket it is abundantly clear the process is better.

When faced with slightly more exotic coverages Knueppel showed to be up to the task. Compare the clips compiled below, in the initial play versus Kansas. Knueppel is hedged as he runs the ballscreen and immeditely swings the ball at the first sign of ball pressure. The subsequent plays Knueppel keeps his dribble alive, turns the corner, and either draws a foul at the rim or finds an open teammate.

Knueppel’s enhanced foul-drawing compared to previous seasons was evident,

but what I found most impressive about this was how the in-season free-throw rate progression was equally significant.

What this shows is Knueppel recognized the respect he had as a shooter and parlayed the hard closeouts he was receiving into rim-attacks.

As delved further and further into Kon’s career, his self-awareness and work ethic became increasingly apparent. To acclimate this quickly when confronted with change is impressive from any player, never mind a freshman being thrust into the greatest pressure cooker program in college basketball.

A point raised by the always insightful Mike Gribanov (@mikegrib8 on X) was how notable it was for a team to achieve the level of success 2024-25 Duke did while primarily featuring underclassmen. Especially considering how veteran-laden the current college basketball landscape is, I wanted to establish a frame of reference for exactly how rare it was for a player to produce at the level Kon did this past season without the benefit of having experienced teammates. Using KenPom’s ‘Experience Rankings’, which weighs the age of their roster by minutes played, along with some other offensive efficiency and self creation metrics yielded the list below.

Unsurprisingly these thresholds produced a list of offensively slanted perimeter players, but at first glance what caught my eye was how size seemed to have a polarizing effect on this group’s NBA translation. The majority of players who returned overly positive EV from the query seemed to be clustered on the shorter end of the height distribution. However, height having a negative correlation with an all-in-one metric like Estimated Wins goes against all I know about these catch all stats, so I looked elsewhere. And what emerged as the obvious contributing factor to this relationship was the share of a player’s shots which were assisted.

Here lie my Koncerns

To see the strength of the relationship between this group of players’ NBA impact and their pre-NBA self-creation burdens I ran a simple linear regression.

While the  r² here is moderately strong, again there are only so many conclusions to be drawn from what was already a small and fairly curated sample. Where the value lies in this cursory analysis is in illuminating how misleading scoring efficiency can be. The list above is littered with players who couldn’t shoulder a higher creation burden and were too deficient in other areas to warrant serious consideration for playing time. Herein lies the challenge in projecting Kon Knueppel, will he be able to become a load-bearing player for an elite offense and/or round out his game enough defensively to avoid being placed in basketball purgatory?

The Case for Helio-Kon

A case frequently made in support of Kon’s primary upside was his potential to develop into a high volume foul-drawer. We’ve already addressed the strides he’s made in this department, so could this trend continue in the league? In short, I am skeptical Knueppel is next in line of the Morey-ball disciples. Of course the absence of dunks in Kon’s resume has been discussed ad-nauseam (this past season Knueppel actually doubled the number of dunks he’d made over the course of his entire AAU career, with 2), its how often Kon has his shot-blocked at the rim that is my greatest cause for concern. Knueppel had 7% of his FGA blocked at Duke, per Synergy, which isn’t a particularly disqualifying number on its own, but puts him in a precarious position when compared to his now peers in the NBA.

Again, this is not an exhaustive sample we’re drawing from, but there’s no recent precedent for a player with Knueppel’s lack of vertical explosion becoming a formidable rim-pressure guard. In fact I think Knueppel, and the majority of the Duke players this past season, saw their driving efficacy greatly augmented by the presence of Khaman Maluach. Individually, Duke did not roster any players known for their prowess getting downhill, and Maluach was chiefly responsible for providing rim-pressure for the team. Clips like the ones below are examples of the attention Maluach demanded on the interior. In each clipped possession there’s a freeze frame on Maluach’s defender showing the defense’s approach, they were almost never willing to send help on Knueppel’s drives should they risk giving up an easy putback or dumpoff to Maluach.

Duke lead the nation this past season in Wide Open threes, and while their connective passing and willingness to forgo good shots for great ones definitely deserves credit, the attention Maluach demanded as a roller greatly simplified reads for Duke ballhandlers.

Again my friend and tan incredible draft mind in his own right @NileHoops beat me to the presses in writing about the inflation in perception many Duke prospects were granted due to Maluach’s gravity, and I would strongly recommend reading his draft notes here on the matter: https://medium.com/@Nile/nile-presents-2025-nba-draft-master-notes-part-2-of-3-626ef75aefbb.

Knueppel’s statistical fluctuations corroborate this relationship. Per Hoop -Explorer Knueppel’s AST% and rim-rate declined substantially in minutes without Maluach versus the minutes he shared with the superstar big.

This effect reverberated throughout the Duke squad, with the team’s mid-range frequency skyrocketing while their PNR frequency plummeted. Recall earlier when Jon Scheyer’s mid-range aversion was mentioned, without Maluach on the court Duke was forced into taking shots they were explicitly advised against.

Debunking the notion that Knueppel will develop into a prolific driver and free-throw grifter at the next level doesn’t necessarily preclude offensive primacy. After all, many of the players presented early as potential analogues found their way by becoming elite pull-up shooters. Knueppel’s shooting profile definitely makes this the likeliest outcome, but there’s still evidence his stellar touch indicators may belie how long a process it will be for Knueppel to reach these heights.

While Knueppel shot 12/30 on pull-up 3s in his final year of AAU, 10 of these makes came in transition or semi-transition, where he had a cleaner platform to self-organize for these attempts.

In the half-court Knueppel’s issues regaining balance on the move and creating space in close quarters were more evident. Even at lower levels Knueppel struggled getting his shot off cleanly under duress, the aforementioned 7% blocked FGA rate at Duke was identical in AAU.

And of course this isn’t to say Knueppel will be easily neutralized as a shooter at the next level, these are somewhat granular issues I fully believe will be addressed and ameliorated in the long run. But my thinking is the tandem of weaker change-of-direction ability and a drastically slower pace (Duke was 266th in Adjusted Tempo) was behind Knueppel’s precipitous fall from a 42% (30/72) off-the-dribble 3P shooter during AAU, to only making 1/18 3PA off the bounce in college. And the acclimatization period Knueppel would need to round his shooting into form could muddle his long-term offensive projection.

The Defense

As limiting as Knueppel’s change-of-direction is offensively, I think it could be truly debilitating on defense. For as much as Duke’s offensive scheme placed Knueppel in an uncomfortable situation early, the defensive scheme greatly compensated for his flaws. Duke’s conservative switching scheme paired with their ++ positional size (1st in the country in average height and 10th in effective height) masked Knueppel’s deficiencies. The team’s penchant for dragging out possessions with their constant switching, along with the deterrence afforded by their backline size, left a minimal amount of ground for Knueppel to cover in any given possession. I think plays like the clips below are responsible for some overstating Knueppel’s defensive ability, in these possessions Kon is guarding under circumstances where Duke’s already effectively ‘won’ the possession by merit of these players either attacking Knueppel in isolation or driving into a congested paint.

The areas where Knueppel’s difficulties changing speed and direction manifested most consistently were guarding capable pull-up shooters. Knueppel’s inability to mirror these smaller players forced him to give them a cushion, without the length to compensate for the distance he provided Knueppel was prone to ceding acres of space on these attempts.

Maybe even more glaring than Knueppel’s issues guarding pull-up shooters was his total inability to navigate screens. Kon almost never remained attached when tasked with working over screens, and when a teammate wasn’t in position to immediately switch onto Knueppel’s assignment an immense pressure was placed on help defenders to correct for the breakdown. Screen navigation for Kon is another struggle which has persisted since high school.

Predictably Knueppel’s issues changing direction were reflected in his agility testing. Although Kon’s jumps impressed relative to expectations, his 3/4 court sprint and lane agility only added to what was already a bleak defensive projection.

Final Takeaways

My intention with writing this piece is not to pan the Hornets for selecting Kon, but in the wake of Summer League I think now is an appropriate time to adjust expectations before a few inconsequential games dilute any evaluation. As it stands currently, there’s an overwhelming amount of data suggesting that even projecting Kon as a neutral defender may be unrealistic. The most likely outcome seems to be that Kon will be left in limbo defensively, he’ll unable to guard backcourt players because of his poor footspeed, and with no supplementary rim-protection or rebounding skills to speak of Kon will bleed possessions as a frontcourt defender. In search of players at Kon’s size who were also lacking in athletic traits yielded a mixed bag. There’s a handful of positive defenders here, even amongst the highlighted players who hit these thresholds in their pre-draft season. But outside of Cameron Johnson and Khris Middleton, who only hit this threshold in their freshman year (and Middleton was 0.3 DRBD% away from falling out entirely), there’s no other players who would be considered top 5 in their respective draft.

The list of players with Kon’s offensive resume to justify such high draft capital is even slimmer.

While it may seem encouraging that Desmond Bane is included in this group because Kon was frequently compared to him throughout the cycle, Bane’s dunks only bottomed out when he was thrust into a primary role. Bane saw his PNR volume almost quadruple from his Junior to Senior year, and this shit in usage coincided with the lowest number of dunks in his college career.

As heavily as I rely on these statistical queries to inform my opinion, I think its necessary to include all players’ seasons as a reminder of the developmental dichotomy. It seems as often as players undergo these outlier developmental arcs there are as many, if not more, players whose weaknesses crystallize much quicker than we’re willing to acknowledge. In Kon’s case, there’s little reason to believe an athletic transformation is on the horizon. And if he’s going to be a defender who needs specific lineup configurations to stay on the floor will his offense warrant those accommodations? The in-season improvement previously outlined gives me more confidence in Kon eventually ‘guard-ifying’ his shot profile and becoming a more capable creator off the bounce. But the idea that the self-sustainability of Kon’s offense can be reasonably doubted is enough to preclude from being a top 5 pick.