{"id":12195,"date":"2025-07-21T05:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12195\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T05:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:34:08","slug":"hornets-edge-kings-to-capture-first-summer-league-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/12195\/","title":{"rendered":"Hornets edge Kings to capture first Summer League championship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They won Sunday night&#8217;s final 83-78 over the <a class=\"sn-team-post-link\" data-team=\"sacramento-kings\" data-league=\"nba\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsnet.ca\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/sacramento-kings\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sacramento Kings<\/a> to claim the title.<\/p>\n<p>Kon Knueppel led the way for Charlotte with 21 points, five rebounds and two assists, earning MVP honours in the championship game. The 19-year-old was selected fourth overall in this summer&#8217;s NBA Draft.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I said before, if we were going to come here, we should win,&#8221; Knueppel said on the broadcast after receiving his hardware. &#8220;So that\u2019s what we did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Teammate and fellow 2025 draftee Ryan Kalkbrenner, the 34th overall pick, added 15 points and nine rebounds.<\/p>\n<p>Isaac Jones, meanwhile, paced Sacramento with 24 points, 11 rebounds and two assists.<\/p>\n<p>The win marks the Hornets&#8217; first Summer League title in franchise history, while the Kings finished as runners-up for the first time in three finals appearances, having won previously in 2014 and 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Charlotte went a perfect 6-0 in the tournament, while Sacramento finished 5-1.<\/p>\n<p>The win offers a glimmer of hope for the future of a franchise that hasn&#8217;t made the NBA playoffs since 2016 and finished last season with the league&#8217;s third-worst record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They won Sunday night&#8217;s final 83-78 over the Sacramento Kings to claim the title. Kon Knueppel led the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-12195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}