{"id":594627,"date":"2026-04-20T00:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T00:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/594627\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T00:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T00:34:08","slug":"mavericks-cooper-flagg-headlines-finalists-for-nba-rookie-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/594627\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks’ Cooper Flagg headlines finalists for NBA Rookie of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas Mavericks<\/a> forward Cooper Flagg<\/a>, Charlotte Hornets<\/a> guard Kon Knueppel<\/a> and Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> guard VJ Edgecombe<\/a> were named the finalists for the 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year award, the league announced on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Flagg averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.2 steals while shooting 46.8% from the field in 70 appearances. He led the rookie class in scoring average and had the most 30-point games (11) by a first-year player since Wembanyama<\/a> in the 2023-24 season.<\/p>\n

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Knueppel finished by averaging 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists while shooting 42.5% from 3-point range in 81 appearances. He became the first rookie in history to lead the league in 3-pointers (273) and was one of two first-year players with five or more 30-point games.<\/p>\n

Edgecombe posted averages of 16 points, 5.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.4 steals on 35.4% shooting from beyond the arc in 75 games with the Sixers. He led the NBA in loose balls recovered (79) and was third in scoring among rookies.<\/p>\n

Flagg, Knueppel and Edgecombe were selected as finalists for Rookie of the Year based on the voting results from a global panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters. The ballots, which were announced on NBC, were due from voters on Friday at 3 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n

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While three players were announced as the finalists, the race is projected to be very close between Flagg and Knueppel. The winner will be announced during the playoffs.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Rookie Wire: NBA: Mavericks’ Cooper Flagg headlines Rookie of the Year finalists<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg, Charlotte Hornets guard Kon Knueppel and Philadelphia 76ers guard VJ Edgecombe were named…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11949,761,760,137190,22487,355,2113,99,2119,55990],"class_list":{"0":"post-594627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-charlotte-hornets","9":"tag-cooper-flagg","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-finalists","12":"tag-kon-knueppel","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-vj-edgecombe","17":"tag-wembanyama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594627","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=594627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}