Kon Knueppel's mom shares hilarious story about David Robinson and Tim Duncan's role in making Duke sharpshooter like basketball

Duke star Kon Knueppel has played a starring role for the No. 1-seeded Blue Devils at the 2025 NCAA Tournament alongside fellow star Cooper Flagg. The Blue Devils have reached the Final Four and are two wins away from winning the national championship.

During a segment of "WFRV 5 Local Sports" on Monday, Knueppel's mother, Chari Nordgaard, revealed that the Duke star did not like sports when he was younger. She then shared how they got him interested in basketball.

"Kon played his first season in K5. He didn't score the whole season and he would duck when the ball was passed to him," Chari Nordgaard said. "And then one day, he had the gall to tell us that he doesn't really like sports.

"So, we were a little worried for a while. How Kon started to love basketball was, we bought a Wii for our family and he started to play NBA Jam on it."

She continued her tale:

"The first games he was playing, David Robinson and Tim Duncan were playing together. So, he started talking about basketball and was like, 'Oh my God, this is amazing.'

"I thought electronics were bad and we don't want any gaming systems, but it really got him to start loving basketball and coincidentally, last game at Duke, David Robinson was there and I got to tell him the story, 'You're the reason Kon likes basketball.'"

Kon Knueppel hails from a basketball family

Kon Knueppel comes from a family with a great athletic background. His mother, Chari Nordgaard, played basketball at Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she was an All-Horizon League member. She is still the program's leading scorer (1,964 points). In 2004, she was inducted into the university's Hall of Fame.

His father, also named Kon Knueppel, was a player for the Wisconsin Lutheran College Warriors, where he was the Lake Michigan Conference Player of the Year twice. He finished his Warriors career as the program's all-time points-scoring leader with 2,064 points.

Knueppel's uncle, Jeff Nordgaard, also played for Wisconsin-Green Bay before playing in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks.

The Knueppel family's basketball tradition does not end with the Duke star. His brother, Kager Knueppel, was playing in the Division I Wisconsin State High School championship last week. It forced his mother to fly back and forth between Wisconsin and Raleigh, where the Blue Devils were playing their games.

All these years later, Kon Knueppel has the chance to surpass both his parents' achievements and win a national championship with the Duke Blue Devils in a week.