While the Nets tipped off Saturday night in Houston, the basketball world was looking elsewhere — at Tobacco Road, for Duke vs. North Carolina.
They were watching the sport’s juiciest rivalry, a game that could produce five first-round picks — and the player most often mocked for the possibility that he will end up in Brooklyn.
Though Duke superfrosh Cooper Flagg is the top projected pick — the prospect for which a third of the NBA is tanking — his classmate Kon Knueppel spent much of the past month being linked to the Nets by Tankathon.
And if Brooklyn ends up outside the top 6, it’s easy to see why.
Knueppel is a crafty wing who came into Saturday’s game averaging 13.1 points and shooting 37.3 percent from deep.
He scored a game-high 22 points and had five rebounds and five assists in Duke’s 87-70 blowout win over rival North Carolina. His teammate Flagg chipped in with 21 in the win.
“Yeah, for me, it’s his poise,” Nets wing and ex-Duke star Dariq Whitehead told The Post. “It’s the way he’s been playing that pick-and-roll. He’s been mixing it up with a lot of guys, just showing how poised he is.
“[His] shot wasn’t going early for him. He continued to stick with it. Started to make better reads offensively and defensively as well. He fought through the slump. It’s a freshman slump. Everybody has it. He fought through it, and that was my biggest kudos to him, just being able to fight through that freshman slump and get on the right page.”
In that aforementioned malaise — bottoming out with a six-point outing vs. George Mason, 0-for-4 from deep — Knueppel shot just 40.4 percent and 23.3 from deep.
But since then, he’d averaged 14.4 points on 48.1 percent and 44.4 from 3.
“It was definitely the worst slump of my life. It was a rough couple of games,” Knueppel said. “[I started] trying to be more intentional with holding my follow-through. … It’s more about the mind than anything else.”
Knueppel actually leads Duke in on-off margin — ahead of even Flagg — at 10.3 points, per statistician Evan Miyakawa.
Now the wing is sixth on Tankathon’s Big Board, and could go in the bottom half of the Top 10.
“I really like Knueppel from Duke,” ex-76ers scout Mike VandeGarde told The Post. “But he’s more one-dimensional, and one-dimensional guys usually don’t go top 6, 7 or 8. They start coming into play about 8-to-15. … The only guy that got drafted super high was Reed Sheppard. [And] Knueppel to me is not Reed Sheppard.
“Is he a really good player and are you excited to have him on your squad? Yeah. But is he Luke Kennard, is he Kyle Korver, is he Gradey Dick? Those guys are really solid [but] you usually don’t draft those guys [top 5] because if you’re in the top 4, 5, 6, you’re usually really bad and need to find that stud. And Knueppel to me isn’t the best player on a playoff team. … [But] I really like his game. And if I’m at eight, I’m looking at him.”
The Nets entered the weekend 15-33, tied with Toronto for fifth in the lottery odds. They were four games ahead of No. 7 Portland.
Often compared to fellow ex-Blue Devil Kennard, or Kevin Huerter, the 6-foot-7, 217-pound Knueppel has a frame and physicality more akin to Joe Harris.
“Its awesome,” Knueppel said of the physicality. “It juices me up.”
Knueppel’s limited playmaking and foot speed will likely keep him outside the top 6.
But if the Nets end up seventh or below, he could be a great complementary piece thanks to his shooting and off-ball movement learned from his father Kon Sr., who was Wisconsin Lutheran College’s all-time leading scorer.
“He played in a men’s league that he runs. I’ve played in it for a long time,” Knueppel said. “So those guys aren’t fast or athletic, so learning how to move off the ball with those guys and play with them. Just watching him doing it my whole life.
“[I watched] guys that played here like Luke Kennard, Grayson Allen, really good players who know how to play off their shot fake, and really move off the ball well. [Steph] Curry, Klay Thompson, those guys who can play without the ball in their hands.”
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