Nobody planned it this way. Jeff Peterson was not sitting in a war room last summer sketching out a German pipeline to Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Yet, with the 14th pick in the 2026 NBA Draft<\/a>, the Hornets selected Hannes Steinbach<\/a>, a native of W\u00fcrzburg, Germany,\u00a0and the nation’s leading rebounder. Four picks later, they added Christian Anderson Jr.<\/a>,<\/strong> the German-American point guard who set Texas Tech’s single-season assist record. One year after winning silver together with Germany’s U19 national team, the two now arrive in Charlotte as members of the same NBA franchise.<\/p>\n At the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup, Germany went 6-1 and reached the final \u2014 the country’s best-ever finish in the tournament’s history. Steinbach earned All-Star Five honors. Anderson led the tournament in assists and made the All-Star Five, too. They were teammates, they were winners, and now they are Hornets<\/a>. That shared foundation of international competition, European basketball culture, and genuine familiarity with each other is the kind of thing you cannot manufacture in a locker room.<\/p>\n Steinbach is the clearest need-fill of the two selections. After one freshman season at Washington, he averaged 18.5 points and 11.8 rebounds \u2014 leading the entire nation in rebounds and setting himself apart as the most dominant interior presence in college basketball this season. He recorded 22 double-doubles \u2014 one shy of Washington’s all-time single-season record. He shot 57.7% from the field. He blocked 1.2 shots and stole 1.1 per game. And at the combine, 6-foot-10.25 barefoot with a 7-foot-2.25 wingspan, having grown nearly an inch and added 19 pounds over the past two years.<\/p>\n The basketball roots run deep. His father, Burkhard Steinbach, played professional basketball in Germany in the same Bundesliga era as Dirk Nowitzki<\/a> \u2014 the man who transformed German basketball’s global reputation and opened doors for an entire generation of European players to be taken seriously in the NBA. Hannes himself played for W\u00fcrzburg in the German Bundesliga during the 2024-25 season before making his college debut with Washington. This is a player who entered the NBA with more professional basketball experience than most players his age \u2014 and it showed in every minute he played at Washington.<\/p>\n For Charlotte specifically, Steinbach addresses the most persistently exploited weakness on the roster. Moussa Diabate<\/a> is outstanding \u2014 a Hustle Award winner\u00a0 \u2014 but at 210 pounds, he has been physically overmatched<\/a> by elite NBA bigs in big moments all season. Steinbach, at 248 pounds, brings the mass and the motor to change that equation. NBA.com<\/a>‘s official prospect page compares him to Alperen Sengun<\/a> \u2014 a physical, skilled interior presence who can create for himself and others while anchoring the paint. If Steinbach’s three-point shooting develops from 34% to a reliable high-30s mark, he has the potential to become one of the more complete young frontcourt players in the conference.<\/p>\n While Steinbach’s story starts in W\u00fcrzburg, Anderson’s starts in Atlanta \u2014 but Germany claimed him as a young man and shaped him into something special. His father, Christian Anderson Sr., was born in Berlin and played professional basketball in Germany, giving the younger Anderson a connection to European basketball that went far beyond summer tournaments. Growing up moving between Atlanta and Germany, Anderson developed a multilingual basketball IQ that shows in every read he makes on the court.<\/p>\n The numbers from his sophomore season at Texas Tech are remarkable. He averaged 18.5 points, 7.4 assists, and 1.3 steals, shot 41.5% from three on nearly 7 attempts per game, and set a Texas Tech single-season assist record with 244.<\/p>\nHannes Steinbach<\/h3>\n
Christian Anderson Jr.<\/h3>\n