{"id":443016,"date":"2026-02-01T15:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T15:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/443016\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T15:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T15:27:08","slug":"rookie-cooper-flagg-dominates-kevin-durant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/443016\/","title":{"rendered":"Rookie Cooper Flagg Dominates Kevin Durant"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/a>fter his 49 point outburst against Kon Knueppel and the Charlotte Hornets, Cooper Flagg followed up with another gem against the Houston Rockets, finishing with 34 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists. He\u2019s really taken his game to another level and it\u2019s hard at times to remember that he\u2019s still a teenager.<\/p>\n

Who does this? He\u2019s in pretty elite company.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s really interesting in these highlights is that he\u2019s frequently going right at future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant, and there\u2019s not much Durant can do to stop him. You can see his frustration here as Flagg repeatedly abuses him. In fact, after one Flagg basket, Durant slaps the ball hard enough that it pops up and hits the backboard. We saw a similarly helpless reaction the other night from Joel Embiid as he threw his hands up, realizing there was simply nothing he could do to stop him.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s really interesting about Flagg\u2019s development is this: remember at the beginning of the season when coach Jason Kidd said he wanted to stress Flagg by playing him at the point? At the time, Flagg struggled a bit and a lot of people thought he was overrated, but Kidd was playing a longer game.<\/p>\n

Flagg learned and he now he\u2019s playing the entire court. He has point guard skills and he can defend inside. He can shoot, drive, handle, and the last weak point in his game is his three point shooting, which he\u2019ll improve dramatically by next season.<\/p>\n

Book it.<\/p>\n

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When Dallas gets Kyrie Irving back, they\u2019ll effectively have a second point guard. And two shooting guards. And two small forwards, and two power forwards and a guy who can help out at center too.<\/p>\n

And all those guys are named Cooper Flagg.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s just 19, still a skinny teenager.<\/p>\n

Imagine where he\u2019ll be when he adds power to his game.<\/p>\n

Actually, while it may seem to soon to ask this question, what the hey: who would you rather build around? Luka Donca or Flagg?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re big fans of Luka here but his conditioning has always been an issue and despite his surreal brilliance, Doncic is slow.<\/p>\n

You can build around a slow player \u2013 Boston built perhaps the best team of all time, the 1986 Celtics, around Larry Bird \u2013 but everyone else has to adapt to how that one guy plays.<\/p>\n

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Doncic also rarely exerts himself on defense, and that\u2019s not an issue with Flagg at all.<\/p>\n

Statistically, you\u2019d have to take Doncic. He\u2019s averaging 33.7 ppg, 7.8 rebounds and 8.8 assists. That\u2019s spectacular.<\/p>\n

But a guy to build an entire team around? Flagg probably has more upside in that sense if only because of his two-way value and his versatility.<\/p>\n

Actually, you can ask the same question about Knueppel and you could make a reasonable argument for building around him over Doncic. Why?<\/p>\n

Because Knueppel has dramatically changed his team\u2019s personality. Not too long ago, everyone wanted to make trades to improve the Hornets. Get rid of LaMelo! Brandon Miller has reached his ceiling! Trade some of the other bums!<\/p>\n

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Now, Charlotte seems like a team with a brilliant future and, like Dallas with Flagg, a lot of that is down to Knueppel. Both of these guys have completely changed their teams and people are going to want to play with them because they have an old-school approach and don\u2019t care about anything more than winning.<\/p>\n

As great as he is, we\u2019re not sure you can say the same thing about Doncic.<\/p>\n

Go to the DBR Boards to find Blue Healer Auctions | Drop us a line<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After his 49 point outburst against Kon Knueppel and the Charlotte Hornets, Cooper Flagg followed up with another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[8731,74193,13034,11949,761,760,2934,5050,5555,5556,22487,764,208541,18069,355,99],"class_list":["post-443016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-boston","tag-brandon-miller","tag-celtics","tag-charlotte-hornets","tag-cooper-flagg","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-getty-images","tag-houston-rockets","tag-joel-embiid","tag-kevin-durant","tag-kon-knueppel","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-lamelo","tag-luka","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443016","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=443016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}