{"id":568062,"date":"2026-04-06T15:27:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T15:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568062\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T15:27:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T15:27:16","slug":"carmelo-anthony-suddenly-changes-his-rookie-of-the-year-pick-and-explains-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/568062\/","title":{"rendered":"Carmelo Anthony suddenly changes his Rookie of the Year pick and explains why"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Carmelo Anthony has revealed he recently changed his Rookie of the Year choice, offering fresh insight during an ESPN broadcast last Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>The former NBA star, widely regarded as one of the league\u2019s greatest scorers, made the admission before Cooper Flagg\u2019s 46-point performance against the Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Anthony had previously backed another candidate, but his stance shifted after reassessing the impact and consistency that the Dallas star has shown across the season.<\/p>\n<p>Carmelo Anthony switches Rookie of the Year pick to Cooper Flagg<img alt=\"Photo by Ronald Martinez\/Getty Images\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3cc24599c3e30afecb48563806fda0b3.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo by Ronald Martinez\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Anthony explained that he initially supported Kon Knueppel due to his role and influence within the Charlotte Hornets set-up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy pick for Rookie of the Year was [Kon] Knueppel, only for what they are doing in Charlotte, his role in Charlotte, his impact,\u201d he began by saying.<\/p>\n<p>However, he admitted Flagg\u2019s performances ultimately changed his view, pointing to his scoring output and all-round contribution.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The ten-times NBA All-Star stated: \u201cBut when you really look at what Cooper Flagg is actually doing, one of the youngest to score 50+ the other night\u2026 We talk about star power, we talk about faces of the league. Cooper has everything that you could possibly want from a young superstar. He plays hard, he fills up every statistical category.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe talk about Wemby all the time with the stat stuffing, and he\u2019s going to be that from now to the end of time. I don\u2019t see too many young players that have what Cooper Flagg has. I\u2019m going to go with Cooper [for the ROY award].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kon Knueppel still making history despite Anthony\u2019s change<\/p>\n<p>Despite Anthony\u2019s shift, Knueppel continues to build a strong case through historic achievements this season.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, the Hornets rookie became the youngest player ever to reach 250 three-pointers, surpassing marks previously set by Stephen Curry and Anthony Edwards.<\/p>\n<p>He reached the milestone at just 20 years old, underlining his elite shooting ability and placing him among a select group of high-level perimeter scorers.<\/p>\n<p>Read more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carmelo Anthony has revealed he recently changed his Rookie of the Year choice, offering fresh insight during an&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[31513,32038,11949,761,22487,1055,355,99,2244,114219],"class_list":{"0":"post-568062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-anthony-edwards","9":"tag-carmelo-anthony","10":"tag-charlotte-hornets","11":"tag-cooper-flagg","12":"tag-kon-knueppel","13":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-stephen-curry","17":"tag-wemby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568062","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=568062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}