Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz are joined by senior sports betting analyst Ben Fawkes to discuss Charlotte Hornets rookie Kon Knueppel closing in on Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg in the NBA Rookie of the Year odds. Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV.
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Video Transcript
We talked earlier about Kanipple’s incredible rookie season.
We’ve seen a massive shift now in the odds on the Rookie of the Year.
Has the time passed?
Like, have we already missed our opportunity to go out there and, and put a little bit of a, a, a coin on the, on Kanipple to win Rookie of the Year?
I don’t, I don’t think the time has, has passed, partially because with these awards markets, what, what’s so difficult as well is you’re not only handicapping what’s kind of going on on the court, you’re also handicapping what’s going on, for lack of a better term, off the court, which is how much are they gonna be on the court, right?
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How, how long are these players playing?
And you also have, again, with these two players, Kon Knipple has been fantastic.
I think if it ended right now, right, that’s why you have Cooper Flagg as minus 220, Kon Knipple plus 120.
You would think that Flagg would win the award, but as the games go by and Flagg misses more games, and Knipple is also on a team that wants to win, they’re in the play-in, right?
They- they’re right on the edge of the play-in tournament, look like they’ll probably make it.
They’re fighting for something, whereas the Mavs are basically fighting to lose as many games as they can, which also means they have the incentive to sit Cooper Flagg, which means he could miss more and more games.
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So I think Knipple is probably where you would want to go right now, just because Flagg is also– We’re not sure exactly when he’s gonna come back, and even when he does, at a certain point, they might shut him down anyway because they’re not playing for anything.
The last thing they want is some big injury, and even if there’s a small injury and he, you know, tweaks his ankle or does something, they might just shut him down anyway.
So I think there’s a chance those odds will continue to shift, and he may even be the favorite here in a week or two.