Mavericks' Cooper Flagg gets sweeping NBA Rookie of the Year declaration
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Mavericks' Cooper Flagg gets sweeping NBA Rookie of the Year declaration originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Five games remain in the season. This means that awards voters are likely going to be decided in the next week or so. A contentious honor that people are debating over is the NBA Rookie of the Year award. Only two contenders are being considered by the end of the season: Dallas Mavericks' Cooper Flagg and Charlotte Hornets' Kon Knueppel. Without a shadow of doubt, Coach Jason Kidd knows that his player stands above his former Duke Blue Devils teammate.
Kidd knows Mavericks' Flagg is NBA Rookie of the Year
Look, the Mavericks head coach has been here before. He had to share the NBA Rookie of the Year award with Grant Hill back in the 1994-95 season. It was a tight race and voters could not decide between one or the other. However, Coach Kidd does not think it will happen for Flagg and Knueppel. He posits that his rising star has separated himself from the competition far more than people think, via Christian Clark of The Athletic.
"He should be rookie of the year. The country is not watching the same thing we get to watch on a daily basis. He’s in rare air. His spirit is about winning. Right now, we’re not. But as he just said in the locker room, we are just going to be that much better come next season. He’s delivered. And the expectations are extremely high on this young man. He’s checked every box every time he’s taken the floor," the Mavericks head coach said.
Notably, Flagg became the youngest player in league history to score 50 points or more. He did it against against the Orlando Magic. At just 19 years old and 103 days, the Mavericks rookie managed to do it with a 63% clip from the field. Not to mention, he scored 24 of those 51 points in the fourth quarter alone. Knueppel does make the race tight because he also broke the NBA rookie three-point record and even became the Hornets' franchise leader, usurping Kemba Walker, in made three-pointers.
It's a hard choice that NBA Rookie of the Year voters had to make. In the hearts of Mavericks fans and Coach Kidd, the race between these two is not even close in the slightest.
