Cooper Flagg\u00a0is already drawing rave reviews with the NBA preseason under way.<\/p>\n
The Dallas Mavericks started the No. 1 overall draft pick out of Duke at point guard in a preseason game Monday night, and\u00a0former NBA champion Kendrick Perkins says the 18-year-old Flagg is like a young LeBron James\u00a0at this stage of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said it on draft night,\u201d Perkins said Tuesday on \u201cNBA Today.\u201d \u201cHe is the white version of LeBron James, when you talk about his IQ for the game, he has that. When you talk about his ability to be able to create, defend, do all those things, Cooper Flagg has that package, just minus a little bit of athleticism less than LeBron.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when it comes down to him and [Anthony Davis] this preseason, I love the two-man game, the action that I\u2019ve been seeing out of both of those guys. And I wouldn\u2019t be surprised come opening night that the ball is going to be in his hands, he\u2019s running that point forward position.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Mavericks\u2019 114-101 victory over former Rutgers\u00a0star Ace Bailey\u00a0and the Utah Jazz, the 6-foot-9 Flagg tallied 11 points on 3-of-13 shooting with seven rebounds, two steals, two blocks and one assist in 21 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know what? He\u2019s better with the ball than LeBron was in his first year in the league,\u201d said ESPN\u2019s Brian Windhorst, who covered LeBron in high school. \u201cNow, LeBron was a more talented offensive player, but LeBron played point guard as a rookie, and frankly, it was a disaster. It was a disaster. He was leading the league in turnovers, even he would admit this.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Flagg at the point (at least until Kyrie Irving returns from ACL surgery), it allows Jason Kidd\u2019s team to have a jumbo lineup that will cause problems for a lot of teams. He started alongside Klay Thompson, PJ Washington, Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at what they can play, really big in Dallas, and you look at what Houston can do when they might play Amen Thompson at point guard this year, and they can put Jabari Smith at three,\u201d Windhorst said. \u201cThese two teams, if they play each other, talk about bigger in Texas. You could see nobody on the court under 6-7, 6-8. That\u2019s modern NBA basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Story by Adam Zagoria, NJ.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg\u00a0is already drawing rave reviews with the NBA preseason under way. The Dallas Mavericks started the No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[761,355,99],"class_list":["post-226864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-cooper-flagg","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}