{"id":224381,"date":"2025-10-19T04:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224381\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T04:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:56:07","slug":"cooper-flagg-seen-among-biggest-winners-of-nba-preseason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224381\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg Seen Among &#8216;Biggest Winners&#8217; Of NBA Preseason"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NBA preseason shouldn\u2019t be taken too seriously, but it does give everyone a chance to see the latest crop of rookies for the first time, and <a href=\"https:\/\/nesn.com\/2025\/05\/brad-stevens-addresses-eye-catching-cooper-flagg-celtics-rumor\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cooper Flagg<\/a> of the Dallas Mavericks was a main attraction in that regard over the past couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Flagg played well enough in Dallas\u2019 games to make Bleacher Report\u2019s list of nine \u201cbiggest winners\u201d from preseason.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooper Flagg\u2019s basic production (11.3 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 1.3 steals and 0.8 blocks) from this preseason doesn\u2019t leap off the screen, but several individual plays certainly have,\u201d BR\u2019s Andy <a href=\"https:\/\/bleacherreport.com\/articles\/25261397-biggest-winners-and-losers-2025-nba-preseason\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bailey wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom pull-up threes\u00a0to explosive rim protection\u00a0to solid playmaking and passing,\u00a0Flagg has shown that he can be a utility player capable of filling up any of the major statistical categories.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe may not collect as many 30-point games as LeBron James did as a rookie,\u201d Bailey continued. \u201cHis highlights may not draw as many eyeballs as Victor Wembanyama\u2019s did in his first year. But it looks like Flagg will steadily collect a bunch of workmanlike lines around 15 points, eight rebounds, five assists, a block and a steal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"nesn-in-content-ad__copy\">Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd on a team with as much veteran talent as the Dallas Mavericks, that will still be enough to land Flagg Rookie of the Year honors and get analysts thinking about an Andrei Kirilenko-like ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Flagg\u2019s versatility will be useful for Dallas as they play the first chunk of their season without Kyrie Irving, who is still working his way back to full health from a torn ACL.<\/p>\n<p>Flagg has already shown a willingness to play some point guard for Jason Kidd\u2019s club, which essentially means that the rookie can already play four positions at the NBA level.<\/p>\n<p class=\"nesn-in-content-ad__copy\">Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>If the Mavericks can stay healthy, they are a sleeper NBA Finals contender in the West. It\u2019s still unbelievable that they were able to get the No. 1 pick in the draft and land Flagg, given all that has transpired with the franchise since they were in the Finals just two seasons ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA preseason shouldn\u2019t be taken too seriously, but it does give everyone a chance to see the latest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,5663,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-224381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cooper-flagg","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}