Cooper Flagg’s soft NBA launch showed that the spotlight adapts perfectly
“I would say that it could be one of the worst games of my life,” Cooper Flagg said to journalists last Thursday evening. “But we got the victory, so that’s what really matters for me.” It was a significant declaration of the 18 -year -old basketball phenomenon after his first Las Vegas Summer League game. The choice of n. 1 In the draft of the NBA of this year-see by the Dallas Mavericks after a university career at a beautiful appearance at Duke-did not had an almost disastrous debut as he did. Although he struggled to shoot the ball, Flagg still managed to make the flashing of his range of gifts and defensive. Clearly Hyperaware up to the moment and the hype surrounding his technical debut of the NBA, seemed determined to show off a show: hunting his shot aggressively and looking for a reference crushed on every occasion.
Related: Cooper Flagg: the seventeen -year -old “cold white boy” who breaks the speech on basketball
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He bounced back with 31 points in his second (and finally definitive) apparition in the summer championship on Saturday. But it was the second half of his comment after the match on Thursday evening in Incapsula because Flagg is one of the prospects for teenagers most advertised for decades: the child is a winner.
The buzz around Flagg began in his native Maine, where he became the first serial number to win the Gatorade Player of the state prize. He moved to Montverde Academy in Florida after his first year of high school in search of a more rigid competition, and awards continued to accumulate: All American, Gatorade National Player of the Year of McDonald, for a long time, the youngest of Worksat, the youngest in Reltolet, the youngest of Reltolet, the youngest Eco Flag is Reclassified to enter a year before – and he did the same one second time to reach the NBA first. With each challenge canceled, he looked for the neighbor with even greater urgency.
In a 2024 feature on Flagg for the ringtone, J Kyle Mann described the knife of the Swiss Army 6ft 9 -inch 205 pounds such as “running towards the grinding”, a longtime feeling Mavericks beat the Tim Cato writer in Las Vegas this week when I ask for his adolescent evaluation. “What really pushes me to Cooper is that it has always climbed,” says Cato. “He loves to quote a quote from his mother”, if you are the best player in the gym, you have to find a new gym. “And I just think he presents himself in every aspect of his career.”
That committed commitment to improvement made Flag more refined and more reserved than many of its peers. The comparisons of Tatum, they could be supported, are so suitable behind the microphone as in the field. His responses may seem a little too shiny, the smoothed jagged edges. He is missing the charisma out of the headquwark of an Anthony Edwards or the unsatisfied growl of a Garnett. There is little brazen, no “face of the league” swallow – just focus. When I asked him after his Monster Second Las Vegas, where he dotted what he looked like every five minutes of play with a crushed poster and seemed every part the superstar in grass, what he dreams of when he lets his imagination would unleash for the potential of his NBA career, had a Shuck Aw-Shuck who apparently responded in a can. “I’m not going too far ahead of myself. I didn’t think about it too much,” he said. “I am a little only concentrated on every single day and I’m just trying to improve. I know that I still have a long way to go and a lot to improve.”
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Related: Cooper Flagg will not go to number 1 in the draft of the NBA. He also broke the stereotype of the Duke’s supercade
“This focus is what stands out more about Cooper,” says Cato. “Sometimes even to his damage. When he says things like” I really don’t really like music “, it seems only a boy consumed only with basketball and challenged himself to reach new heights.”
Flagg could do much worse than ending up for an approximate equivalent of Tatum, of course: a questionable leading player who is removed from an NBA championship. It would probably be satisfied quite satisfied with that trajectory (and, it is worth noting, the new Englander grew a fan of Celtics). But some insiders see an even higher ceiling. An NBA manager told me that Flagg was “the most skilled and stronger perspective in one of his summer championship matches”, adding: “It has a rather strong case as the most complete 18 -year -old player from Lebron James”.
What hit the most in the flag debut was not a single element. It was totality: aggression, balance, basketball qi, defense, dimensions, athleticism. Flagg is ready to make his formal debut in the regular season in October as a collaborator of plug-and-play already ready with Superstar Event. Against every forecast, a Mavericks organization a few months removed from the Luka Dončić saga seems, in fact, to have hit the lottery.