Hornets Still Have No Timeline For Kon Knueppel After Hamstring Setback

The Charlotte Hornets ruled out Kon Knueppel with a left hamstring strain for Friday's game against the Boston Celtics, and they have not put a timeline on his return. It is the same hamstring, and the same diagnosis, that kept him out of the first eight games of the season.

Charlotte went 3-5 in the eight games he missed to start the season. It has now lost five straight, and Knueppel played less than six minutes of the most recent one.

“I’m actually looking forward to getting that answer soon, too,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said. “Talking to the performance staff and trying to just gather all the information we can right now, I think it’s gonna take a little bit of time so that we can make sure that we give the correct timeline for Kon, for the media, for our team.”

His first game back ended at Barclays Center with 6:12 left in the opening quarter Wednesday. Bringing the ball up, he lost it off his foot and out of bounds, then left favoring his left leg, and Charlotte ruled him out at halftime of a 114-104 loss to the Brooklyn Nets with what it called left leg soreness.

All 3 of his points came at the foul line. Thursday's injury report changed the listing to a left hamstring strain.

“Still being evaluated,” Lee explained. “I thought that our performance staff did a really good job in terms of making sure he got enough contact, he got live play, he hit all their testing marks and things of that nature. We will re-evaluate and figure out next steps for Kon.”

Charlotte first announced the strain on Sept. 25, saying it happened during offseason on-court activity. He missed training camp, all four preseason games, and the first eight games of the regular season.

Knueppel still had the Oct. 21 opener at Brooklyn circled when he spoke at media day on Sept. 28.

“We know that I want to play in every game,” Knueppel said that day. “We saw that last year, [I] pretty badly rolled [my] ankle and only missed one; I didn’t miss any games in college or high school. So I’m going to do my best to get myself prepared for that.”

By Oct. 18, three days before that opener, Lee was still without a timeline for Knueppel or Coby White, who strained his left calf in camp. The team later sent Knueppel to practice with the Greensboro Swarm, its G League affiliate. White made it back Nov. 2, two days ahead of him.

Charlotte took Knueppel fourth overall out of Duke in 2025, and he averaged 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.4 assists over 81 games as a rookie. No rookie had ever made more than his 273 3-pointers, which also led the league. He finished second in Rookie of the Year voting.

His one missed game that season came after a Dec. 26 game at Orlando, when he left in the second quarter with a right ankle injury after scoring a team-high 16.

Grant Williams, Dennis Schröder, and Moussa Diabaté are also out Friday against a Boston team that is 6-2 and beat Charlotte in an Oct. 14 preseason game at TD Garden. The Hornets are 3-6 and host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday at 7 p.m. ET.