{"id":621849,"date":"2026-04-21T17:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621849\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:39:08","slug":"duke-alum-kon-knueppel-joins-two-hall-of-famers-in-nba-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621849\/","title":{"rendered":"Duke alum Kon Knueppel joins two Hall of Famers in NBA history"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the conclusion of the regular season last week, Kon Knueppel<\/a> of the Charlotte Hornets<\/a> has officially joined two NBA Hall of Famers in the record books.<\/p>\n

In 81 games, Knueppel averaged 18.5 points and 5.3 rebounds while shooting 42.5% from three-point range.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Prior to this year, only two<\/a> rookies ever posted 15 or more points per game and five or more rebounds per game while shooting above 40% from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n

The other two players each won NBA Championships and went on to be Hall of Famers. Those two were Celtics legends: Larry Bird, who did so during the 1979-80 season, and Paul Pierce<\/a>, who reached those marks during the 1998-99 season.<\/p>\n

Of the three, Knueppel had the highest three-point percentage, besting both Bird and Pierce. That said, Bird led Knueppel and Pierce in both scoring and rebounding during his rookie campaign, averaging 21.3 points and 10.4 rebounds.<\/p>\n

While Knueppel still has a long career ahead of him, it’s clear that the former Blue Devil is off to an incredible start.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Duke Wire: Duke alum Kon Knueppel joins two Hall of Famers in NBA history<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the conclusion of the regular season last week, Kon Knueppel of the Charlotte Hornets has officially joined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5670,5662,34409,590,11474,301404,11368,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-621849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-kon-knueppel","12":"tag-larry-bird","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-paul-pierce","15":"tag-rebounds-per-game","16":"tag-regular-season","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621849","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=621849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}