The Charlotte Hornets beat Miami in a highly entertaining play-in game the other night, and it sparked a ton of conversation. Some of the themes: Kon Knueppel blew the Rookie of the Year race, the Hornets are in big trouble, and one more we’ll get to in a minute.
The Rookie of the Year business is stupid. It’s going to be Knueppel or Flagg, if not both. One game is not going to change that.
And secondly, for anyone who has paid attention to Knueppel, he’s not going to let that game control the next game. He’s too smart and too competitive to do that.
Third, Miami has one of the best cultures in the NBA, and in particular, one of the best defensive cultures in the league. They singled out the rookie, and took him down.
And fourth, while Knueppel had a bad game, Charlotte definitely didn’t.
On Friday, the Hornets will play the Orlando Magic for the final spot in the playoffs. Orlando has some talent, notably up front with former Dukies Paolo Banchero and Wendell Carter.
The teams played four times this season, with the Hornets winning three of those. Orlando won the first one, in October, but the Hornets won the other three quite easily.
Knueppel averaged 12.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game in those games. It doesn’t mean the Hornets will win a third time, but it is a clear pattern.
Okay, back to what we said we’d come back to. It turns out that LaMelo Ball had a key role in Charlotte’s drafting Knueppel. In fact, his analysis of Knueppel was so impressive that Hornets GM Jeff Peterson said this about Ball:
“[Ball] was very detailed in his evaluation of why he liked him. That was even more impressive that he was able to kind of highlight him because there were some other guys that he didn’t highlight. He may have a future in the front office if he wants.”
That’s pretty high praise.
That said, one other topic of conversation about Ball is his flagrant foul against Bam Adebayo. It was intentional and dangerous, and it may have cost Miami the game. He’s lucky to have only gotten a $35,000 dollar fine.
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