For the umpteenth time in their history, the Charlotte Hornets were left frustrated by the NBA Draft Lottery as they failed to draw the No. 1 overall pick, meaning they lost out on the chance to draft a potential franchise-changing player in Cooper Flagg. But they may very well have gotten the next-best thing.
After ending up with the No. 4 overall pick in the NBA Draft, the Hornets selected fellow Duke standout Kon Knueppel, keeping the 2025 ACC Tournament MVP in the Carolinas for his professional career. Naturally, comparisons between Knueppel and Flagg have been bandied about, and Hornets executive vice president of basketball operations Jeff Peterson pointed out one area where Knueppel may actually be superior when asked about the comparisons.
“They’re both winners, they’re both versatile — I would say we got the better shooter,” Peterson said. “But look, they compete on the defensive end, they’re both versatile. They can make plays with the ball in their hands, they can play off the ball. So they do have a lot of, I’d say, parallel traits to one another that ultimately, in my mind, in our mind, they at the end of the day equate to winning.”
A former five-star recruit, Knueppel starred alongside Flagg at Duke, with his former teammate becoming the Draft’s belle of the ball as the No. 1-overall pick by the Dallas Mavericks. While the two’s paths now diverge in the NBA, Knueppel likewise laid out the way in which he and his wingman have common threads in how they approach basketball.
“We have a similar thought process on how to play the game,” Knueppel said. “It’s not about individual accolades or whatever, it’s all about winning, making the right plays and giving effort 100 percent of the time.”
Knueppel was one of two Duke players selected by the Hornets, as the team also selected Sion James with the No. 33-overall pick in the second round. In addition to the pair from Duke, Charlotte also drafted UConn’s Liam McNeely and Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner.