Kon Knueppel entered the NBA with a sparkling college and high school scoring and 3-point shooting resume. He’s quickly made good on Charlotte’s investment of the fourth overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, only trailing number one pick Cooper Flagg in Rookie of the Year odds at this point in the season.
His outside shooting marksmanship fuels Knueppel’s potent offense, which has allowed him to post 19 points, 3.5 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game on true shooting 6.7 percent above the league average. Above all else, the Duke product is enjoying a legendary start to his NBA career from beyond the arc, sinking a white-hot 43.5 percent of his 7.8 3-point attempts per game.
As a first-year player, Knueppel ranks third in total 3-pointers made so far (143), only trailing Stephen Curry (149) and Donovan Mitchell (152). He ranks 10th in total 3-point attempts (329), sporting higher efficiency from deep than most of the league’s most prolific snipers. Through half of his rookie season, Knueppel is inarguably one of the league’s best shooters, but how does this rookie season compare historically?
No 2025 rookies come close to matching Knueppel’s outside shooting volume and efficiency, but that’s true for the majority of classes. Keegan Murray currently holds the NBA record for total made threes in a rookie season, canning 206 triples in 2023. And according to data compiled by Sportscasting data analyst Fran Huzjan, Knueppel sits on pace to shatter that record.
After 40 NBA games, no rookie made more triples than Knueppel has this season and it’s not close at all. The distance between Knueppel and second-place Luka Doncic and Damian Lillard, who sank 92 threes through their first 40 NBA games, exceeds the distance between second place and 11th-place Stephen Curry (61).
At the time of writing this piece, Knueppel trails Murray by 63 triples. On his current pace, Knueppel projects to break that record within the next 20 or so games, leaving him a comfortable cushion even if he were to miss time or slump later in the season. If Knueppel doesn’t make a three for the rest of the season, he’d finish within the top-25 all-time for threes made among rookies.
It’s worth noting the massive spike in leaguewide 3-point volume and attempt rate across the last decade or so, especially since Curry entered the league. In 2010, Curry’s rookie season, teams attempted 18.1 threes per game at a 35.5 percent clip compared to 37 attempts per game at 35.9 percent in 2026. That means modern shooters receive more opportunities to tally triples than players did even 10 years ago, and Knueppel has taken full advantage of that trend.
What would it take for Knueppel to approach or even break some of Curry’s seemingly untouchable records? It’s nearly impossible to project a rookie’s NBA career 10 or 15 years into the future, even one as talented and productive as Knueppel. At the time of writing this, Curry has made 4,207 3-pointers, nearly 1,000 clear of second-place James Harden (3,295).
On his current pace (3.4 made threes per game), it would take Knueppel 1,196 games to match Curry’s record or the equivalent of over 14 regular NBA seasons. Expecting him to break or even approach Steph’s record is an unfair assumption, but Knueppel sports as robust a chance as any rookie to enter the league in quite some time. We’ll check up on this one in 2040, I suppose.
All stats updated prior to games played on Jan. 20
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