Hornets summer league grades: Kon Knueppel – At The Hive

Last week, the Charlotte Hornets took home the Las Vegas Summer League crown (official t-shirts coming soon apparently). Obviously winning the whole thing means that a good number of players did good things, but there’s nothing else to talk about now. Why not go through each of the players that are on the Hornets roster and grade them on how they did. We’ll start with number four overall pick, Kon Knueppel.

Knueppel’s summer league started in about as underwhelmingly as it could have. There were plenty of fans skeptical about Knueppel’s ability to translate his game to the NBA level, and that first outing looked like justification for those concerns. He struggled to get his shot off, looked timid with the ball in his hands, and even missed a handful of free throws. Fortunately it was all uphill from there.

After sitting out the second game as a part of a return to play protocol, Knueppel found his stride in the second game. In the final four games, he averaged 18.3 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game. He was aggressive hunting for 3-point looks and meandered his way for crafty baskets inside the arc. He has a lot more work to do to fully quell the doubts, but he took a strong first step.

Knueppel’s appeal has always gone beyond the box score, and the intangibles of his game were on full display from the outset. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a player quicker to dive for loose balls. He fights on the glass and had a bunch of rebounds tips that ended up getting corralled by teammates. Among players that played in more than one game, only Ajay Mitchell finished with a better total plus-minus. Knueppel led the entire NCAA in that same stat last season. At some point that won’t be a coincidence.

So with all that, we have to give Knueppel a grade, since that’s why you came here to begin with. It’s encouraging that he bounced back from his opening game clunker, but that clunker still counts. He also didn’t have any single dominant game you can point to and say that was his shining moment. On the other hand, he wasn’t drafted with any expectations of explosiveness. He was drafted to be a winning player, and winning is what he did.

Final Grade: B+