With Moussa Diabaté and Dennis Schröder both scratched before Friday’s matchup with the Boston Celtics, the Charlotte Hornets had to dig deeper into the rotation - and that opened the door for rookie Hannes Steinbach.
Diabaté was originally questionable when the league’s 10:15 a.m. ET injury report dropped, but by 5 p.m. the Hornets had ruled him out with right quadriceps tendinopathy.
Schröder was also sidelined, dealing with left thigh soreness. Kon Knueppel and Grant Williams were already out on the morning report, each with a hamstring strain dating back to the offseason.
That left Charlotte thinner than usual, and coach Charles Lee made it clear he likes what he sees in Steinbach.
“You can expect a guy that has a very high basketball IQ, high motor,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said of rookie Hannes Steinbach before the game. “Offensively, I think that he’s been a monster on the boards. Any practice situation we have, he’s got such great hands and such great feel to make some passes.”
Lee added, “Really excited to see him out on the court today,” Lee continued. “I think he’s going to bring an edge and probably bring a little bit of juice.
Your first NBA action, I think he’s going to be flying around the court. But I’d rather have that than someone that I’ve got to try to rev up.”
Steinbach’s path to this moment has moved quickly. He did not play in the Oct. 21 opener at Brooklyn because of a coach’s decision, then made his NBA debut two nights later in a blowout loss to the Atlanta Hawks. On Oct. 30 at Washington, he logged two minutes, missed his only shot and finished with 7.7 minutes per game across his three appearances.
The Hornets have already seen flashes of what he can do when the game opens up. At Summer League in Las Vegas in July, Steinbach averaged 15.8 points and 9.2 rebounds in four games while shooting 60.2%. He opened with 15 points and a game-high 11 rebounds in a win over Orlando, then closed the event by averaging 24.5 points and 13 rebounds over his final two outings, including one game with seven offensive rebounds.
“Yeah, I just love playing physical, love to make contact,” Steinbach said that month.
His rebounding edge has been a calling card for a while. Steinbach was the Big Ten Freshman of the Week in early December 2025 after putting up 26.5 points and 13 rebounds in a home loss to UCLA and an 84-76 win at USC, a game in which Washington trailed by 18 at halftime. That week, Huskies coach Danny Sprinkle described him as “literally like Dennis Rodman” when it came to chasing offensive boards.
Before college, Steinbach was already making noise in Germany’s Basketball Bundesliga with Würzburg. A year before that Big Ten honor, he had a career-high 18 rebounds in a semifinal opener against Ulm, then followed it with 20 points and 10 rebounds in Game 5 of the quarterfinals, helping seal a 97-88 series-clinching win over Braunschweig.
Würzburg is also his hometown. Steinbach was born there on May 1, 2006, the son of retired player Burkhard Steinbach, and Dirk Nowitzki, another Würzburg native, sent him a video that ESPN played on its draft-night set.
Charlotte selected Steinbach 14th on June 23, then took Texas Tech guard Christian Anderson Jr. at 18. The Hornets list Steinbach at 6-foot-10 and 248 pounds, and his rookie scale deal is worth $24,981,907 over four years, starting at $5,227,200.
Friday’s game also carried a familiar backdrop for Lee, who spent time with Boston as an assistant on the 2023-24 title team. He pointed to the standard he wants his group to keep, even with the injury list growing.
“A man that I worked for before in Boston, he’d always say, ‘Nobody cares,’ and nobody cares if you have injuries, and you just gotta keep trucking and keep competing,” Lee explained. “We know what our identity is, and we got players that gotta play to that identity and to those standards.”
In Other News...
Hornets Fans Have Every Reason To Panic About This Start
The early stretch has been rough enough in Charlotte to make even patient observers uneasy. The Hornets have stumbled through a poor start marked by heavy losses, a low offensive rating and an offense that has struggled to find any real rhythm, especially at point guard. Injuries have only made the picture murkier, leaving the team short on answers while it waits for healthier bodies and a few new contributors to settle in.
For now, the concern is less about one bad night than the shape of the whole opening month. The Hornets have been getting buried on the scoreboard and have not shown much consistency on either end, which is a dangerous place to be this early. There is still time for the return of injured players and some internal improvement to change the mood, but right now the start has given fans every reason to worry about how deep this slide could go. [Read more 🡒]
Hornets Hit Another Low As Brandon Miller Concern Grows
Bostons visit only deepened a rough stretch for Charlotte, which was overwhelmed from the start in a 119-80 loss as Jayson Tatum poured in 34 points and Derrick White and Payton Pritchard added steady support. The Hornets never found much rhythm offensively, and the margin kept widening as the game wore on, leaving another flat night for a team searching for answers.
The bigger concern for Charlotte came with Brandon Miller, who exited at halftime because of right groin soreness. For a team already trying to steady itself after another lopsided defeat, any issue involving one of its most important young players adds a layer of unease, especially with the offense already struggling to generate much of anything. [Read more 🡒]
Tatums Big Night May Have Clarified A Celtics Lineup Call
Bostons visit to Charlotte turned into a one-sided NBA Cup night almost immediately, with Jayson Tatum setting the tone in a game the Celtics controlled from the opening minutes. Boston jumped out to an 18-4 run and never let the Hornets find much rhythm, rolling to a 119-80 win behind Tatums all-around impact and a defense that kept the margin comfortable for most of the night.
For Charlotte, the game also came with another concern when Brandon Miller left in the second quarter with groin soreness and did not return. The Hornets were already chasing a game that had slipped away early, and Millers exit only deepened the challenge as they tried to regroup against a Celtics team that looked settled in every phase. [Read more 🡒]