How Kon Knueppel scores at an athletic disadvantage
The former EYBL leading scorer and current Duke Blue Devil has made his name by making tough buckets look effortless. Here's how he does it.
There are obvious traits scouts value more when trying to find the top-scoring prospects. Shooting touch, handling craft and the ability to play through and create contact are a premium. However, athleticism is most people's shortcut to evaluate a prospect’s scoring potential.
It’s easy to get lost in the effortless blow-bys, the highlight posters and the bully-ball drives to the basket, but those types of players rarely ever hit the ceilings set for them. It’s important, sure, but as we’ve seen time and time again, athleticism doesn’t scale quite like skill. The best of the best typically have both, but a quick look around the NBA shows that those lacking in one of the two aren’t the ones soaring above the rim.
Enter Kon Knueppel, one of the crowning jewels of a stacked six-player Duke recruiting class. At a glance, Knueppel isn’t going to wow you with any of the things that scream potential. He’s a stocky, borderline chubby, 6’5” or 6’6”, weighing 217 pounds. Hell, his only EYBL dunk attempt looked like this:
If anything, though, all that is a testament to just how good he is. Knueppel finished high school as 247Sports’ 18th-ranked prospect in the class of 2024 and not too far behind on ESPN’s top 100, ranking 19th.
The 2023-24 Wisconsin Mr. Basketball averaged a staggering 25.9 points, 8.6 rebounds and 5.3 assists on a 30-0 state-champion Wisconsin Lutheran team. He’s been one of EYBL's leading scorers every year since he was playing 15U, including his 22.5 points per game performance in 17U back in 2023.
But how has he been so effective, given his physical disadvantages? To put it simply, without trying to sound brash, Knueppel is more skilled than everyone else in his age group. Not to the all-around degree that his now teammate Cooper Flagg demonstrated when he played with Maine United’s 16U team in 2023, but as a pure scorer, Knueppel is nearly untouched.
RECENT:
As is the case with a lot of athletically challenged scorers, Knueppel’s repertoire begins and is centered around his shooting.
His shot is among the purest. Starting from the ground up, his footwork has a rhythmic bounce to it — no motions or steps wasted as he sets up off the catch. The path of the ball follows the movement of his ankles, knees, and hips, coming down briefly to gather energy before rising and exploding. His shoulders are square, his elbow is perpendicular to the floor, his wrist is loaded and his follow-through is fully extended with a gooseneck wrist. It’s a perfect visual representation of how he shot 43.9% from three through EYBL 17U competition.
Off the catch, that percentage rose to 45.8% on 83 three-point attempts, one of the highest marks in the competition. Knueppel draws so much attention off the ball with his ability to rise and fire quickly and effectively.
He plays incredibly well off screens and movement as well, allowing him to blend on- and off-ball play with on-ball mastery. Notably, Knueppel doesn’t create much elevation on his shot, instead, utilizing a quick, snappy one-ish motion to get it off in a heartbeat.
The quickness of his shot plays into his ability to stay low to the ground, another key to his uncanny scoring versatility. In basketball, athleticism is typically and stupidly boiled down to two things: speed and verticality. They’re the easiest things to point out as physical advantages on a basketball court, especially the higher up in level you go.
However, there’s much more to athleticism than just the highlights. Like everything that happens on and beyond the court, there’s nuance. Knueppel understands the intricacies of basketball strength. While he is traditionally strong, he utilizes this closeness to the hardwood to generate advantages to a greater degree.
The phrase “low man wins” is most often used in American football to describe battles between offensive and defensive linemen. What the phrase refers to is leverage. The low man has a lower center of gravity and is, therefore, harder to move. In a sport like basketball, the phrase is a key principle in creating space, getting by defenders or, inversely, keeping offensive players in front on defense.
Knueppel utilizes this brand of athleticism to hunt shots effectively. He’s not working defenders with long-distance crossovers or a powerful first step — oftentimes, the defenders are quicker and longer than him — but when he plays low to the ground and utilizes his strength and a lowered center of gravity, creating a look from the midrange, or carving out room around the rim gets a lot easier.
Knueppel’s handle helps a ton here. In the clip below his defender essentially stays in front of him the whole time, sliding his feet well to the rim and even forcing Knueppel to change direction a couple of times. However, Knueppel stays low to the ground, and his strength allows him to maintain his angle and freeze his defender once he’s in his spot.
Another athletic deficiency that Knueppel has turned into a strength is speed, and it’s a tool that blends perfectly into his low-to-the-ground handling style.
Speed is a tool that gets players drafted high. De’Aaron Fox, Collin Sexton, and Kira Lewis were all lottery picks in large part due to their ability to sprint the floor. In the same vein, at a different position, players like James Wiseman and Mo Bamba were taken very high in no small part due to their ability to get out in transition or cover ground in a straight line at over 7 feet tall.
Knueppel is slow in comparison to those guys, but that can be just as challenging for defenders. His pace-y style allows him to change gears and directions seamlessly, maintaining his balance as he bumps, shifts and hops.
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Knueppel’s handle is positionally excellent. Supposedly, Knueppel hit a major growth spurt a handful of years ago. Before it, he played exclusively point guard, but as he grew taller he transitioned into more of a wing role.
His past is evident in the way he operates at such a calm and steady pace, as well as the way he’s able to leverage his scoring with ancillary passing. He probes and bumps as he scouts for an attacking angle or a smidge of space to get a shot off, taking what the defense gives him and forcing the advantage into the widest possible version of it he can get.
Knueppel is sparing with his dribble as well. He understands that he’s not on the court to dribble the possession out and force a tough shot, so he uses every dribble as efficiently as possible. The most you’ll see him dribble on a single possession comes when he’s isolating or coming into a pick-and-roll. He may set up a move before picking his angle, but then it’s just an extra bounce or two with a bump mixed in to get off the shot he wants.
Otherwise, it’s a rhythm dribble into a crossover step-back or a between-the-legs into a powerful dribble toward the rim. The former is exactly what Knueppel does below. The way he handles is rarely flashy but it is anything but limited.
His point guard background is on full display in the pick and roll. Synergy only recorded 50 possessions of Knueppel as a pick-and-roll ball handler through EYBL play, but his effectiveness was on full display.
As a passer, Knueppel can’t break down a game like the best of the best, but he’s heady, willing and quick-witted as a playmaker. He loves his overhead jump passes to hit his roll men or diving cutters, and leads his teammates into open space very well. He’s also adept at using the initial screen advantage to get into his shot, pulling up with very little hesitation or driving into the chest of the low man for a foul.
One area where Knueppel could stand to grow is as a passer off a live dribble. He’s great at throwing the ball at an angle or with enough zip to get by the defense when he can gather and calculate, but the best playmakers can throw a pass off the dribble without a moment’s notice.
Knueppel won’t be one of those elite-of-the-elite playmakers, but he does enough to leverage his scoring and keep defenses honest, utilizing his on-ball acumen to force defenses to stay engaged one-pass away.
The pass below is the Knueppel signature. As soon as he receives the screen he’s reading his roll man’s defender. The hedge comes high and Knueppel quickly leaves his feet and leads his defender with a quick, snappy pass over the top of the defense.
Overall, Knueppel has turned himself into a master at his craft, scoring at a degree better than his peers despite being less athletic than his defenders.
He utilizes his disadvantages and innate guard skills as leverage to get off clean looks and find his teammates with efficiency. His game stems from his shot, though, as Knueppel is a truly elite shooter with near-perfect form, and can shoot it in just about every setting at a 40% clip.
There’s just so much to love about Knueppel’s offensive repertoire, and while the athletic hold-ups make him easy to count out, his polish is undeniable.