{"id":615665,"date":"2026-04-18T19:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615665\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:28:10","slug":"cooper-flagg-faces-tight-battle-with-kon-knueppel-for-nba-rookie-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615665\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg faces tight battle with Kon Knueppel for NBA Rookie of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Beck started covering the NBA in 1997 and has had a Rookie of the Year award vote most of those seasons. He can\u2019t remember a race like this one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is, I think, the closest Rookie of the Year race that I can remember, and maybe that there has been in a very long time,\u201d said Beck, who writes for The Ringer. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s really, really close, and I think this one is incredibly close.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decision this season has come down to two candidates. On one hand, there\u2019s Cooper Flagg, the Newport native who has looked like the NBA\u2019s next star after being taken first overall by the Dallas Mavericks. On the other, there\u2019s Kon Knueppel, the sweet-shooting, record-setting guard for the Charlotte Hornets.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg, right, talks to Hornets guard Kon Knueppel, his former teammate at Duke, after a game in Dallas. The two players are the leading candidates to win NBA Rookie of the Year. (Jessica Tobias\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Both were teammates last season with the Duke Blue Devils, with Flagg celebrating when his friend was drafted with the No. 4 overall pick. Now, they\u2019re dueling each other for one of the league\u2019s top awards, and there\u2019s an argument to be made for both.<\/p>\n

Ballots didn\u2019t arrive to writers until mid-afternoon Thursday, a delay caused by Luka Doncic\u2019s and Cade Cunningham\u2019s appeal of the league\u2019s rule requiring a player to play in 65 games in order to be considered for awards.<\/p>\n

Beck, who previously wrote for the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, declined to say who he\u2019d vote for, but admitted being torn between the two choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really hard,\u201d he said. \u201cI could talk myself in or out of either of them on a given day, because their cases are just very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some voters have announced how they\u2019re voting. According to the NBA awards vote tracker<\/a> compiled by Max Croes, Flagg had 13 first-place votes late Friday night, while Knueppel had 12. Knueppel had received nine second-place votes, Flagg had gotten five.<\/p>\n

The case for Flagg, Dallas Morning News writer Mike Curtis said, comes down to the 19-year-old\u2019s talent and value to his team. Flagg led rookies in scoring at 21 points per game and also averaged 4.5 assists (second among rookies), 6.7 rebounds and 1.2 steals.<\/p>\n

The plan for Flagg to be part of a playoff team, supported by Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson, was quickly dashed, as Davis battled injury and was traded, Irving never returned from ACL surgery, and Flagg quickly had to become the Mavericks\u2019 focal point.<\/p>\n

Curtis announced his vote for Flagg in a Morning News article<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at overall impact. I think that Cooper did that top to bottom for this team, in a role that he didn\u2019t necessarily anticipate when he was drafted,\u201d Curtis told the Press Herald. \u201cHe had the typical No. 1 pick experience. \u2026 He had to go through it. He not only met expectations, but he exceeded expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flagg in December became the youngest player in NBA history to score 40 points in a game, and then in April became the youngest to reach 50 with a 51-point outing against Orlando. One game later, he scored 45 against the Lakers.<\/p>\n

Chris Broussard of Fox Sports, Rachel Nichols of FS1 and Brian Windhorst of ESPN are among the voters joining Curtis in picking Flagg.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had him as the Rookie of the Year a little bit before that, but I think those two performances really stamped it for me,\u201d Curtis said. \u201cJason Kidd kind of said it perfectly. \u2026 He said Kon is a part of a puzzle, and Cooper is the puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other voters don\u2019t see it that way. Bill Simmons of The Ringer, Michael Wilbon of ESPN and Dan Devine of Yahoo are among the voters who have picked Knueppel, who averaged 18.5 points and became the first rookie to lead the NBA in made 3-pointers, with 273.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Kon Knueppel, left, and Cooper Flagg helped Duke reach the Final Four in 2025 before beginning their NBA careers. (Frank Franklin II\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe Flagg is favored versus Kon, who\u2019s the second-best guy on a playoff team,\u201d Simmons said on a podcast on April 10. \u201cI think (Knueppel\u2019s) the key to that team, in a lot of ways, because he\u2019s the only one that really moves. The gravity that he brings when he moves around, and how defenses react to him, you have to have it for how they play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knueppel\u2019s odds grew when Flagg missed eight games from Feb. 10 to March 5, putting his ability to reach the 65-game mandate in question. Knueppel played all but one of Charlotte\u2019s 82 regular-season games.<\/p>\n

\u201cKon played (11) more games,\u201d Beck said. \u201cThat\u2019s not insignificant.\u201d<\/p>\n

His team also fared better. While Dallas missed the playoffs at 26-56, Knueppel\u2019s Hornets made it to the play-in rounds at 44-38, a 25-win improvement over last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooper clearly is the more skilled player, Cooper is the player with more responsibility, a heavier burden,\u201d Beck said. \u201c\u2026 (But) the exercise isn\u2019t who\u2019s the better player in the outline. It\u2019s not \u2018Who has the better skill set?\u2019 It\u2019s \u2018Who had the better season?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had people who were advocating for Cooper Flagg say \u2018Listen, watch them play and it\u2019s not even close.\u2019 \u2026 But it\u2019s not who has the higher ceiling. It\u2019s not who will have the better career.\u201d<\/p>\n

A tie for the award has happened \u2014 three times, in fact, with the latest coming in 2000 when Elton Brand of the Chicago Bulls shared it with Steve Francis of the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n

The vote now allows for second- and third-place votes, which makes the odds of a tie even longer. The final margin, however, could be as thin as it gets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a perfect storm kind of thing,\u201d Beck said. \u201c\u2026 It\u2019s rare that we have multiple guys taken near the top of the draft, who are putting up great numbers as a rookie, but in one of their cases is also on a really good team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howard Beck started covering the NBA in 1997 and has had a Rookie of the Year award vote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-615665","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-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615665","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=615665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}