100%, particularly complimented his all-around game and ability to hit difficult shots.

Not just raved. He was called amazing by steve Kerr and legendary coaches and the main team voted him (a high school kid at the time) MVP/ most amazing player on the select team. Reminder that legends like KD and Steph and LeBron said at that exact moment that he played better than Jalen Duran, Brandon Miller, Podz, Payton Pritchard, Amen Thompson, trey Murphy, Jaime Jaquez. The best young talent already in the NBA were playing worse than a high school kid.

Put that into your brain everyone. Cooper has been the best young player in the league minus Wemby Since high school and he still is playing at a top 10 player in the league right now. People who only follow highlights or look at aesthetically pleasing players just don’t see what coaches see. Coop doesn’t look sexy on the court but his impact is top 10 player in the league right now no question.

Yeah looks like it’s another really good one doesn’t it.

The amount of pressure LeBron dealt with is incomparable though. If you weren’t alive at the time you wouldn’t know how much hype there was.

They were broadcasting LeBron’s high school games on ESPN. Basically the question was not how good LeBron would be, but “Will he be, or not be, the greatest basketball player of all time?”

Ricky Rubios starting and doing a really solid in the olympics final at 18 was pretty insane. Not saying he was better but damn, hes youth national team stats are completely insane…

U16 final against russia in double OT: 51 points ¹⁸⁄₃₁ fgm 24 rebounds 12 assist 7 steals

To be fair, Flagg is not a super consistent defender as of right now

He has incredible defensive potential and already has great defensive playmaking as far as getting stocks and disrupting plays but his overall on-ball defense and fundamentals aren’t quite there yet consistently imo

I actually thought he’d be better defensively in the NBA than he is now, but that’s also because I didn’t expect him to be this advanced offensively this soon

Bron came into a league that was way less offense friendly than it is today. Scorelines would routinely be in the 70s and 80s. Bron putting up 21/6/5 as a teenager in that era is ludicrous.

His ceiling doesn’t exist, a player like him has potential to be the best player ever. I’m not saying he will hit it, but to act like he can’t possibly pass LeBron or Wemby is weird. He looks better at 19 than Wemby was ar 19 by a good amount.

Luka was Euroleague MVP and was NBA ready at 19, pretty similar rookie stats as Flagg. I guess you could argue defense, but he had the full offensive package.

Thinking Basketball puts a lot of stock in +/- data, and Harper had better metrics last year.

Problem is, single year +/- data can be very messy, especially for ¹⁸⁄₁₉ year old kids in vastly different situations.

I’m not sure what his infatuation with Wilson is about.

Flagg was 3, Wilson 2, Harper 1.

That’s a level of glaze I cannot accept even as a bulls fan.

They don’t watch college tape, the placements of the top 4 from this year was fun guesswork done almost entirely based on summer league (right after Wilson hit all those 3s 🤣), but caveats like that don’t get aggregated along with the lists.

Ben Taylor is very high on Harper tho

If you follow some draft pundits, then you might’ve heard that some of them put Flagg as the 6th pick in the 2026 class. A bit of it is disrespectful to what Flagg’s already done in the NBA as a teenager, but it’s also a sign of how strong draft analysts think the 2026 class is.

Like, Flagg was putting up video game numbers at Duke and then 1 year later, Boozer surpassed those video game numbers himself, and Boozer was only the 3rd pick this year.

TB have a hate boner for dallas

Wilson aint better than Boozer

When it comes to ranking players, I’ve always felt like Thinking Basketball are just hot-take merchants. They’re being contrarian for clicks.

I forgot what the ranking was, but they did something like put Ant outside the top 10 under 25 players last year, so I just stopped taking them seriously.

Thinking basketball wants as many eyes on them and mentions as possible…They clearly won you over…

They’re pretty reactionary. I appreciate their analysis, especially for players that have a lot of data, but for rookies, they go by vibes lol

That’s an absurd take after seeing five games from Caleb Wilson.

I dont think its bizarre, you could easily argue just off potential alone u take wilson

Flagg is probably the best offensively out of the three. But the other two have better defensive potential and I think are better playmakers.

They will once the mavs make noise in the seedings this year, I actually think yall will be the breakout team this year like the spurs last year, rockets the year before and okc the year before that.

Genuinely, AD levels of defensive potential and Tatum levels of offensive potential – if not better. Potentially, but he’s still a teen for crying out loud.

Just kinda insane how quiet everyone is about him.

Eta: Cooper Flagg is on pace for a DWS of >4.5 this season as a 19 year old, which would be higher than all but 3 season from AD. At 19 years old.

Small sample size, of course, but food for thought. And that’s with him being a rather pedestrian defensive rebounder due to how often he’s defending away from the basket.

I don’t think it should be controversial at all to make that comparison.

They will!

Come on now I wouldn’t go that far lol…

What playing for the Mavs does to a mfer

Cooper doesn’t have a style as flashy as Doncic, I remember rookie Doncic having highlight every game

I honestly think part of it is that it’s impossible to deny his greatness, NBA discourse is based in arguing and there’s nothing to argue he’s clearly amazing

with such a huge gap in iq thats insane

yall downvote me for saying flagg is younger than acuff with a huge gap in iq !?!? OBVIOUSLY not boozer guys

Bruno cobocolo is one year away from being as old as Tatum

that old chestnut

The crazy thing is I’m not sure he will. Bron was an absolute ironman for most of his career, he averaged nearly 80 games a season for his first 8 years and scored 28ppg.

If anyone is going to do it, it’ll be Flagg, but the modern league just doesn’t really allow it’s superstars that type of load, especially if the Mavs are building a real championship roster and they start pacing him for the playoffs.

And he’s quietly just doing it as a dominant two-way force. Nobody argues that he’s not great, but it feels somehow like he’s still flying under the radar.

The cheat code is coming into the league the same age that LeBron did and nearly a year older than Kobe did?

It’s really just good fortunate, if he was born 11 days later he would have had to be in 2026 draft and would be in the middle of the pack age-wise (among the top guys at least).

The cheat code is playing in a more offense-friendly era

His dads balls?

I mean, it’s obviously still way too early to say anything definitive, but so far he’s still behind in total points through his 1st season + 5 games of his second season, and in ppg in his first 5 games of his second season compared to LeBron.

I mean it took mj a long time to get there

I hate that term generational. What he’s doing is insane, but I think the term is only relevant at draft time and applies to the degree of hype. I don’t think he was generational, even if it appears as though he could be in retrospect.

Jordan wasn’t generational, although he was as a rookie.

Funniest Yaxel/age joke I’ve seen yet cause its so true

That take was just inexcusable. Don’t let that guy ever be GM of the Mavericks.

Both are two-way beasts, obviously. But I think it’s safe to say that Cooper offers a bit of additional flexibility simply by not being 7’4”. But Wemby’s defense is the defensive equivalent of Steph’s gravity on offense. It just breaks the physics of the game.

Coop is closer to a true 1-5 defender. It’s just different. Pulling Flagg away from the basket doesn’t do anything to limit his defensive impact.

Both have the potential to be the best player in the league if all things go right.

We are spoiled as fans to get to watch them.

If you are strictly talking ceiling, it’s still Wemby by a decent margin. Wemby as a rookie was already the best defender in the league and will likely go down as the best defender to ever do it if he does not improve at all, and he will likely improve.

Coop is a ridiculously good defender too, but I don’t think it’s close, even if Coop becomes the second best.

Offensively I believe Coop has a much higher floor than Wemby. I believe their offensive ceilings are close but I still give Wemby the edge because of his height and talent. But Wemby also has a mind that will throw up some stinkers that I don’t think Coop will have as often giving him a much higher floor.

There is definitely a timeline where both are 1 and 2 in the world with Wemby being better on Defense and Coop being better on offense and both still being elite on the other side. Then it would a debate about team success.

I believe if both hit their absolute max potential, Wemby is better.

Second only to Wemby, and arguably the safer bet. He reads the game at a higher level on offense, and they’re likely equals in terms of competitiveness and work ethic.

But Wemby has athletic gifts that make him insurmountable in some key ways

IMO Coop does stuff that others did, but he does it way better.Wemby is trying to do stuff we’ve never seen and it’s already better than most things.

Wemby has a distinctly higher ceiling, and I say this as someone who called Flagg the best American prospect since LeBron when people thought it was blasphemous to call him generational

I actually think when it’s all said and done Flagg will be able to point to more personal accolades (like MVP’s) than Wemby just though health and longevity

I’m a mavs fan but it’s not disrespectful to say Wemby lol. He’s 7’5 and a lock for DPOY every year he plays 65 games while having insane offensive numbers + the ability to create. He’s a once in a lifetime player

If they’re both healthy it’s Wemby I think pretty clearly (which isn’t a knock on coop as much as a testament to Wemby being a Martian). But I don’t think it’s insane to pick the guy with the body type that historically holds up better. It’s more akin to Oden-Durant but if Oden (who was actually pretty good when healthy) were even better

I’m from Maine, been following Cooper Flagg since he was in high school and am obviously a huge fan of his but if both were guaranteed to be healthy for their full careers the answer is Wemby. Not a knock on Cooper by any means, Wemby is just that rare. If you’re taking injury history of people with Wemby’s body type into account though it becomes a much more interesting discussion.

It’s Wemby, it’s not close right now. Now after we see Flagg in the playoffs, you can discuss something like that.

Kobe was 17 when he was drafted.