How the Charlotte Hornets Built a Good Defense Without a True Rim Protector

The Charlotte Hornets do not have a true rim protector. As amazing as Moussa Diabate is, his true strength is offensive rebounding and relentless effort. He's undersized as a center, and he's not exactly a lockdown shot-blocker.

Ryan Kalkbrenner has the size that Diabate does not, but he's not an elite defender, either. The Hornets were also better with him off the court last year, so even if he was, it would've come at a high cost.

So, how did the Hornets have a really strong mark of opposing field goal percentage at the rim? By finding defenders who are surprisingly adept at defending in close and creating a system that allows them to do just that to the best of their abilities.

Obviously, this is true of their big men. Grant Williams is an excellent defender, and he had one of the best opponent FG% marks in the NBA last year. But he's supposed to be a good rim defender since he's a big.

Kon Knueppel and Brandon Miller are not. Sion James is not, either. Those are perimeter players, and with all due respect, James is the only one of them that's actually a strong perimeter defender. Yet, the three of them ranked among the best non-bigs in defended rim field goal percentage vs. expected.

2025-26 Leaders in Defended Rim FG% vs Expected among non-bigs…

Protecting the rim! pic.twitter.com/2j801uru3X
— Basketball University (@UofBasketball) July 29, 2026

In other words, these three protect the rim way better than expected. James and Miller saw a 6.9% decrease in field goal percentage versus the expected metrics, and Knueppel was slightly better at 7.0%. That puts them in elite and surprising company.

Miller has some size, but James and Knueppel are not big players. Yet, they do as good a job protecting the rim as any non-bigs in the NBA. They're in there with Jaden McDaniels, Kevin Durant, Derrick White, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, all defenders we would not put Miller and Knueppel in company with.

Charlotte Hornets guard Sion James (4) blocks a shot by San Antonio Spurs guard De'aaron Fox | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

There are a lot of factors to this. First, the system is set up for this. The Hornets purposefully used Diabate as a rebounder because that's his best asset, and they left the rim protection to other players. It worked.

Obviously, the team and individual metrics above are stout, but the Hornets had the 11th-best defensive rating in 2025-26 (fifth-best after January 1). This was despite having no rim protectors and quite a few porous defenders on the roster.

But it also comes down to the players executing well. We think of Knueppel and Miller as offense-first players who aren't great at stopping the man in front of them, and justifiably so. But they both, as well as James, do have some strengths on that side of the ball that work wonderfully.

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