{"id":212893,"date":"2025-10-14T14:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/212893\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T14:23:10","slug":"2025-nba-rookies-who-already-look-like-draft-steals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/212893\/","title":{"rendered":"2025 NBA Rookies Who Already Look Like Draft Steals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Fellow Charlotte Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel is getting most of the press for playing exactly like a top-five pick should, but it&#8217;s Liam McNeeley, selected 25 spots later, who could represent the best first-year value on the roster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">A former five-star high school recruit, McNeeley never quite found his stroke at UConn. Mechanics like his shouldn&#8217;t have produced a 31.7 percent conversion rate from deep, and early flashes as a pro suggest better efficiency is ahead. The 6&#8217;7&#8243; forward debuted with a 22-point, 12-rebound, six-assist effort in Summer League play. While the rest of his exhibition and preseason work hasn&#8217;t produced numbers quite like those, McNeeley continues to pass the eye test with flying colors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-bp_small__body__article__medium css-1vqr2el\">Skill-wise, McNeeley appears to be a lottery pick\u2014one whose court sense, passing acumen and shot-making prowess could lead to big things. If given a rotation role, he might approach his collegiate numbers\u201414.5 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game\u2014with even more efficiency than he showed as a freshman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fellow Charlotte Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel is getting most of the press for playing exactly like a top-five&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-212893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}