A German national who played at the University of Washington, the 2026 backup-5 fix the front office spent three drafts chasing.
Steinbach is a German national who spent two college seasons at the University of Washington. He grew up in Germany, moved through the German age-group national teams, and came to Seattle as an 18-year-old recruit ahead of the 2024-25 season. By the end of his freshman year he had outgrown every projection the Huskies' staff had for him. By the end of his sophomore year he was the most dominant freshman-or-sophomore center in the Pac-12.
This matters because the read on Steinbach's fit keeps getting blurred by his passport. A "German national" identity means he is on the German Basketball Federation's eligible-player list and is in their senior-team pipeline. It does not mean he played for Bayern Munich, Alba Berlin, or any professional German club. He played for the Huskies. He was coached by the Huskies' staff. He ran the Huskies' offense. His tape is full of Pac-12 footage, not Bundesliga footage.
He measured at the 2026 NBA Combine with a 6'10.25" barefoot height, 248 pounds, a 7'2.25" wingspan, and a 9'0" standing reach. Those are not the numbers of a tweener forward being asked to play the 5. Those are the numbers of a center who can guard the NBA's biggest bodies on Day 1 without being pushed off his spot. He grew an inch and added 19 pounds over two years at Washington. The trajectory is still moving in the right direction.
Charlotte finished 27th in defensive rebound rate in 2025-26 — the second-worst defensive rebounding team in the league by that measure. If you watched a Hornets game last year, you saw why: the bigs rotated correctly but they did not finish defensive possessions. Opponents got two, sometimes three, looks. The bench could not plug the gap. By the second half of the season the front office's "get bigger and more physical" mandate stopped being a slogan and became a need.
Steinbach's 11.8 RPG at Washington projects to the simplest possible defensive fix: a backup-5 who boxes out, secures the ball, and hands it to the lead guard without turning it over. The number is not a college stat that translates. It's the cleanest signal in his file. He played 38 college games against Pac-12 opponents, accumulated 448 defensive rebounds, and committed an in-discipline number of fouls relative to his minutes.
A 27th-ranked defensive rebound rate + an 11.8-RPG backup center = the single biggest defensive metric the front office can move with one draft pick. That is the read.
The reason Charlotte didn't kick the 5 to the second round is in that math. The first round has roughly 10 bigs the analytics department believed could move the defensive rebounding number. The second round has maybe three. By the time pick 47 came up, the players Steinbach compares to would already be off the board.
Steinbach was the #14 pick. He was not a "trade-back and grab at #18" type of pick, and he was not the kind of player you wait for at #32 or #40. Two reasons.
First: the size. He's a 6'10.25" center with a 9'0" standing reach — measurements that translate to a top-10 statistical ceiling in three-to-five years. Players who measure like that are taken in the lottery because the NBA's biggest positions are getting bigger. Charlotte needed a fifth body and got one with starter upside, not a 5-by-default.
Second: the rebounding rate against Pac-12 competition. The 11.8 RPG is not a rec-league stat. That number was posted against Arizona, UCLA, Oregon State, USC — programs with NBA-caliber bigs on their own rosters. If he produces 11.8 against that level of competition as a sophomore, the floor at the NBA level is the mid-to-high single digits per game in 18 minutes a night as a backup. That's the simplest, least-extravagant projection in his file.
Steinbach's comp is the type of question scouts take seriously. His ceiling looks like Domantas Sabonis or Jonas Valančiūnas with better mobility and a worse shot. The mobility question is real — at 248 pounds with a 7'2" wingspan, he has the frame to anchor an NBA paint but not the lateral agility to switch onto perimeter-oriented bigs in space. That is the gap that defines whether he becomes a starter or a high-end backup.
The honest floor is a player who gives Charles Lee 16-20 minutes a night, rebounds at the rate he rebounded at Washington, and provides Charlotte's bench with a paint anchor it has not had since the Cody Zeller years. That is enough of a player to justify the #14 pick. The ceiling is the Sabonis-comparison version — a top-eight center in the league who initiates pick-and-pop offense from the high post and protects the rim at the same rate. The gap between those two outcomes is the development question that scouts will track year-over-year.
The Lauvergne question is the one nobody is asking publicly: how will Steinbach's game age? Lauvergne was a similar profile — 6'11", mobile, polished low-post game — and his NBA career stalled at the backup-center role. The difference is Steinbach is two years younger and was the best player on a top-tier Pac-12 team as a sophomore. He is not Lauvergne. But the comp path is real, and it's the comp path that scouts will monitor through Year 3.
Here's the read in one paragraph. Charlotte took a backup center in the lottery to fix the second-worst defensive rebounding rate in the NBA. They paid a first-round price because the analytics department doesn't see a credible second-round version of the same player. Steinbach's floor is "16 minutes a night and a +2.5% defensive rebound swing," and his ceiling is a starter. The number of NBA centers who profile like that at this point in the draft is small enough that #14 is the price you pay.
Cheapest, simplest, most defensible pick of the lottery. Solid B+ at the slot. Steinbach is not the upside play of the class — that was Yaxel Lendeborg, and the front office decided against trading up for him. He is the most defensible one. The German-national eligibility doesn't change his basketball value, but it puts him in a credentialed international pipeline that helps the front office's broader recruitment story in Europe. He plays the position Charlotte needed most, at the size they needed most, with a measurable translation rate. He will be on the floor in 18 minutes a night by midseason.
The question that lingers — and it should linger — is what the front office gives up by reaching on size when the more aggressive play was the trade-up for Lendeborg at #11 or #13. The "get bigger and more physical" mandate says Steinbach. The "play faster and shoot more threes" mandate says Lendeborg. They chose the first one. We'll know by February whether that was the right call.
Related Swarm Outpost coverage: Why the Hornets Took Christian Anderson Jr. at #18 · Yaxel Lendeborg and the Stretch-4 Trade-Up · Morez Johnson Jr. and the Defense-Led Big · Eastern Conference Blueprint.
Reply with a take — short or long. The Hive Talk is open to everyone.