Introduction to Cooper Flagg and the Mavericks
Did you like those 63 minutes of summer league basketball from Cooper Flagg this past week? I hope you did, I hope you did very much.
While waiting for the 30-for-30 on Flagg’s four days in Vegas to come out, I have some early thoughts. The fact that he shot not quite 36% from the floor before being shut down by the Mavericks for the summer should not set off too many alarm bells. Like other things, it should mostly stay in Vegas. It’s a reminder that the last time we really got worked up around here over an NBA summer league performance was Dennis Smith Jr. as he dueled the Lakers’ Lonzo Ball in 2017. This looked like a glimpse of the future. We didn’t realize Smith’s future was going to include time with the Knicks, Pistons, Blazers, Hornets and Nets in his first seven seasons.
Cooper Flagg’s Performance and Expectations
So, while making too much of any small summer league sample is a bad idea, this glance at Flagg does remind us that the player coming to Dallas to save the Mavericks from last year’s disaster is not a finished product. He got outplayed by the Lakers’ Bronny James in the opening quarter of that first game — a rough 10-point night on 5-of-21 shooting — and the only one I know who views Bronny as a future star in this league is his disgruntled 40-year-old Lakers teammate.
And dad.
Mavericks
Comparison to Luka Doncic and Future Prospects
It was a reminder that Flagg is a year younger than Luka Doncic was when he arrived on these shores with a wealth of European experience at age 19. Luka won Rookie of the Year then settled comfortably into all-NBA first-team selections for the next five seasons. I would say that while Flagg is the front-runner for the rookie award in 2025-26, no one should harbor any expectations of first-team status around the league in his first few seasons. This is a really good player who has a chance to lift the Mavericks out of a hole they created, but what we really learned in the last month is that the timetable is going to be the tricky part.
Western Conference Competition and Challenges
So general manager Nico Harrison wants to win a championship on the defensive strength of his oversized team? Maybe being the best in Texas should be the first step, and that’s going to be a sizable challenge after the Houston Rockets had the best offseason in the league, not counting teams whose improvements came almost entirely off a 1.8% chance of winning the lottery.
It’s hard to see anyone in the Western Conference doing much more than looking up at Oklahoma City for the next few years. The Thunder are the extremely young NBA champs with an enormous number of future options thanks to a stockpile of No. 1 picks, and they’re already locking up their talent for seasons to come. But No. 2 behind the Thunder in the standings last season were the Rockets, who just turned Jalen Green into Kevin Durant overnight.
Rockets and Spurs: Teams to Watch in the Future
Green averaged 21 points per game last season but was a relatively low percentage shooter, and then when the playoffs arrived, the bottom fell out. In Houston’s seven-game first round loss to Golden State, Green averaged 13.3 points while shooting 37% from the field and 29.5% from the three-point line. Durant turns 37 in September, but you give him all of Green’s playoff shots and he will connect on a higher percentage when he’s 47.
Alongside that, the addition of veteran Clint Capela to Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams up front gives Houston a versatile wall of big men to make for some potentially great battles with Anthony Davis, Daniel Gifford and Dereck Lively II.
As for the one-man big wall of Victor Wembanyama in San Antonio, he was cleared this weekend to return to play after missing time with a blood clot in his shoulder last year. The Spurs wisely built for the future with draft picks Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant to add to their stable led by De’Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle. They look like a team that won’t go anywhere beyond maybe the play-in games this season, but watch out in three years.
Conclusion and Future Outlook for the Mavericks
So that’s the issue confronting the Mavs and Flagg and how their teenage future star fits in and delivers alongside Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving, whenever he returns next season. It’s easy to see Flagg having something like a Cade Cunningham growth chart. I’m not making a straight comparison of the two but Cunningham at Oklahoma State was a given No. 1 overall pick, a 6-6 forward who could play the point. Detroit’s Cunningham made his first All-Star team in Year 4.
If that turns out to be the case, you wonder if the Mavericks aren’t sandwiched in there, caught between the Texas’ team of now (Houston) and later (San Antonio) in their pursuit of the Thunder.
They will play bigger games — 82 of them, in fact — to start unveiling those answers soon enough. For now, I’ll venture to say Flagg’s 31-point night against the Spurs on a warm summer night in Vegas was more a sign of things to come than those Dennis Smith dunks that had us coming off the couch in 2017.
Scheffler won Best Golfer, while Flagg was named Best College Athlete in men’s sports.
The news came down shortly after this year’s No. 1 overall pick was in attendance at Dallas’ Summer League game.
