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Three…two…one…the shot goes up from the top of the key and all the noise gets stolen from the room.
Stolen, stolen, stolen…
Yeah, all that crowd noise is gone. Only the held breath of the young shooter can be heard, waiting, waiting and waiting. The rest of the noise taken by the suspense of whether the attempt will go in or fall off. A fusion of hope and heartbreak, seesawing on the thin, tensioned tightwire of suspense.
And there he is, the young shooter, his right-handed follow-through held up to the rafters…
Wait.
We gotta reframe this.
Actually, not the rafters of a 20,000-seat arena. His follow-through is held up to the ceiling of a family room in a house in Milwaukee. And to be honest, the crowd noise isn’t a bunch of fans wearing opposing team jerseys. It’s the innocent laughter of four other young sons and a couple of young cousins and the encouragement of a group of adult family members closer than any basketball team could ever be. And the top of the key isn’t 20 feet away from the rim. And the rim isn’t even 10-feet tall.
And the shot doesn’t drop! But there’s still one second on the clock and the young shooter gets the rebound and he throws up a miraculous shot over his head, not even looking at the rim, and that shot misses and he somehow got fouled with .5 seconds left and he can still win it at the free-throw line and even though the free throw misses he catches the board and then he puts in the game-winner from the top of the key!!!
And a young version of Kon Knueppel runs around the family room of the Knueppel household with his hands joyfully stretched out high to the ceiling, the mini full court of the family room feeling the stampede of his passion. He’s not even in the family room anymore. He’s at Madison Square Garden and he’s just won it all in The World’s Most Famous Arena.
This family room accounts for two of the eight hoops on the premises, and it’s just one of the places where Kon’s basketball imagination was molded; the next shot is always going in.
A lot of Knueppel’s shots have been going in. As of this writing, in the middle of March 2026, he’s in the midst of a historic rookie season with shooting splits of 48.8 percent from the field, 43.8 percent from distance and 87.3 percent from the line. That’s all good for a true shooting percentage of 65.2. It ranks him 11th overall in the NBA among qualified players. He sits near the top of the heap alongside lob finishers and the reigning MVP. It’s an astounding number for two reasons:
1. He’s a rookie.
2. Sixty percent of his shot attempts have come from beyond the arc.
This figure, next to his per-game averages of 19.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists, have kept defenses perplexed and fans rapt.
It’s not the prodigal No. 1 pick, nor the insanely athletic and charismatic second and third selections in the 2025 Draft, who is currently favored to win Rookie of the Year. Right now, it’s the quiet and drama-free No. 4 pick out of Duke who has the award squarely in his sights.
But a lot of time has passed since Knueppel last played the solitary “three, two, one” game in his childhood home. He’s no longer hoping his jumpers go in. He’s worked harder than most people can ever understand to become the best three-point shooting rookie in NBA history. Now he knows exactly how to make jumpshots.
This is the story of a craftsman.
A lot of people from the Midwest pride themselves on studying a craft and working with their hands. Knueppel is no different. It’s just that while some folks from Milwaukee might work in some form of construction or manufacturing, Knueppel works in basketball.
He pays minute attention to his feet and his hips and his hands. Everything he does is at game speed, and that is why he’s succeeding. He says the cost of the work shows up all throughout his body.
“My shoulder, especially my right shoulder,” Knueppel tells SLAM at his cover shoot in early March. “Yeah, it gets sore. You know, legs and hips. You’re in a power position for most of the game, so those parts of your body are gonna be sore.”
His power position is unique when studied. The 20-year-old Knueppel has already talked at length about his affinity for Larry Bird and Klay Thompson. He’s a true student of basketball.
“At first, I gained an appreciation for the history of the game,” Knueppel says. “I started reading books about it and that got me into memorizing stats, different players, and so then you wanna emulate stuff that players do. So it was just going out there and trying to do what you saw and what you heard and what you read.”
The remnants of Thompson can be seen in the base of Knueppel’s form. Like the future Hall of Famer, Knueppel keeps his feet wide apart, arguably even wider than Thompson.
“I think having a strong base is important,” Knueppel says. “I think it just gradually got wider. It used to be kind of narrow in high school, but once I started shooting from deeper, I think a little bit wider worked for me. I mentioned the right leg kind of comes forward on some of those shots and I think [that is] just a little extra power, a little extra torque. So you start with your hips and it's all there, your feet are square, you go all the way through, and I think when you focus on the lower body especially, the rest of it takes care of itself.”
His mental checklist for catching and shooting the ball has been informed by his family members. These aren’t just some weekend warriors. These are high-level hoopers.
His dad, also named Kon, is a 6-4 sniper who finished his career at Wisconsin Lutheran College as the program’s all-time leading scorer. His mom, Chari, is the all-time leading scorer at Wisconsin-Green Bay. She was inducted into the Phoenix Hall of Fame in 2004 and her jersey was retired in 2024. Kon’s uncle (Chari’s brother) Jeff was also a standout at Wisconsin-Green Bay and made it to the NBA. Kon II’s uncles on his dad’s side are named Klint, Kole and Klay. Together, the older Knueppel brothers formed a barnstorming three-on-three team that became famous in the Midwest for taking down tournaments with each of the brothers serving a specific role that complemented the others.
Kon II’s four younger brothers are also getting active on the floor. Kager is up next and already has multiple DI offers. Kinston will get his shot after that. Kash and Kidman are the youngest brothers, and they’re being formed by elite sibling competition. Then there’s Kon II’s cousins. Dawson Nordgaard is a 6-10 forward, and Zavier Zens is a complete scorer from the wing. Another uncle of Kon II’s is Tod Kowalczyk, the head coach of Toledo. Kowalczyk’s son, Race, has committed to play at Bradley. With all of that dedication to basketball in the family, Kon was destined to have success on the court.
The Hornets got off to a slow start this season. Their low-water mark came right before Thanksgiving. After a huge 28-point loss to the Knicks at home, they had dropped seven in a row and their record was 4-14. But they flipped it completely after that and are now 34-34 as of this writing. They beat the last three NBA champions during their run and have established a dominant starting five that features a three-headed monster of offensive production. Supported by Miles Bridges and Moussa Diabaté in the frontcourt, LaMelo Ball, Brandon Miller and Knueppel have been frying people on the perimeter. They’re fast, aggressive and exceptionally skilled at putting the ball in the basket. This starting five’s record is 22-5 when they take the floor together. It’s been a run highlighted by lots of good energy and contagious cheer.
“A fun one was in Chicago the last time we played there,” Knueppel says. “We just made a lot of good, solid, sound basketball plays. Personally, I got on the floor a couple of times, big energy plays for our team, so I think of that one. I think of when we played in OKC, just making good decisions. I turned it over too much that game, but as a team, as a whole, it was great basketball. I think the last night in Boston, just a good team win defensively, offensively. We just played to our strengths.”
The biggest display of individual strength from Knueppel to date came on January 29. It was a road game in Dallas where the rookie led the Hornets in scoring with 34 points. But the contest came down to the very last moments.
The ball was in the hands of Knueppel’s college teammate, Cooper Flagg, with 10 seconds remaining. Surging to double the ball, Knueppel’s blitz spooked Flagg enough to make him throw a pass. Knueppel got a hand on the attempted pass, the Hornets recovered the ball and Knueppel got fouled at the rim. He sank the game-winning free throws, outlasting a mega 49-point output by Flagg.
The nation picked up on the noise and Knueppel picked up the win. Less than a month later, on February 26, Knueppel had another accomplishment to his name. As mentioned, he became the best three-point shooting rookie the League has ever seen. He surpassed the previous rookie record of 206 made threes over the course of a season during a blowout win against the Pacers. He’s now leading the entire NBA in made threes with 236. In fact, he and Ball are one and three in made threes.
There’s a lot to be impressed by with Knueppel. He’s running more pick-and-rolls than he was expected to, he’s getting to the rim more than he was expected to and the Hornets are winning more games than they were expected to. Knueppel’s the real deal and the buzz is only gonna get louder.
So that same kid, the one who was endlessly playing in the Knueppel house family room on the mini full court, what would he have done had he read about the most prolific three-point shooting rookie ever?
With a slight laugh, Knueppel says, “He’d look at it and probably be shocked that it was that early in the season, but also maybe, go out there and, you know, try to practice some shots.”
Of course he would go shoot. The next shot is always going in, even as the clock winds down from three to two to one…
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