Why Cooper Flagg will change the NBA | Slam N Jam

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The Athletic NBA Daily 1h 8m 3 speakers 8 chapters transcribed
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Why is Cooper Flagg the number one pick in the NBA Draft?

Alex Speers 1:53
post game uh shout out to uh my buddy joe masato from the oklahoma and like tried to ask him again like can you just like tell me more like why like how did you come up with this and he's like well i used some creativity or something like that it was just i don't know it's just too good um okay so we're talking about the the nba draft there's a clear number one guy in this draft, Cooper Flagg. I want to just try to contextualize how good he is. And so I wanted to look back at some of the best prospects of the last few years. So let's go with Cade Cunningham, Palo, Chet, Wimby, Scoot Henderson as prospects only, like pre-draft prospects. Where would we rank them? Cooper flag amongst those guys, or how would you rank those guys and where would Cooper like fall into the pecking order there?
Sam Vecenie 2:47
Yeah. I have Cooper out of all of them except Wendy. Wow. The level to which Cooper has been able to problem solve basketball this season at Duke as an 18 year old. It's almost like when you watch his first five minutes, six minutes of a game or whatever, you can see all of the information flowing into the supercomputer that is his brain. And then right around that point in the game is where you start to see him just go, okay, like to quote the lethal shooter guy, I understand it now. You know what I mean? Like he just gets it from that point forward and he understands, okay, this is how I have to attack this guy. This is now the matchup that I'm looking for.

What makes Cooper Flagg stand out among recent prospects?

Sam Vecenie 3:34
This is what they're doing in terms of help defense and how I can attack it. The processing ability that he showcases is incredibly, incredibly high level. He's improved a ton as a shooter this year. That was the biggest concern coming into this season was what he would look like as a shooter from distance, from mid-range. He started to show flashes of that during his last year at Montford, but we weren't quite sure how exactly that would translate from day one within college basketball as the game speeds up and you're dealing with better athletes on a night-to-night basis. whether or not he's dealing with better athletes on a night to night basis, you know, as he was in the NIBC playing at Montverde versus playing in the ACC up for debate. The ACC is not very good this year, but they're certainly better players at the very least. Uh, people I think will point to like some of his performances in high level games.
Sam Vecenie 4:27
And I mean, I can pull up his numbers in these high level games and high leverage moments. And it's just like, yeah, he's still a stud. He did have a poor moment at the end of the Kentucky game. And at the end of the Kansas game, But if you look at the Kentucky game, he had 26, 11, 2, 3, and 2 against Arizona, who's a top 20 team.

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