Cooper Flagg, who is officially considered a “teenager” by the NBA, has scored a whopping 121 points in his last three games (51, 45 and 25). 40.3 points (51.2% shooting from the field, 56.3% from three-point range and 93.3% from the free throw line), 7.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists are the averages of the Dallas Mavericks rookie, dubbed “the great white hope of the NBA”, in these three consecutive games for the history books.
In his previous two games, 19-year-old, 2.06m Cooper Flagg averaged a brutal 48 points, becoming the first freshman since Wilt Chamberlain to score at least 95 points in two consecutive games.
In his last game, the No. 1 pick in the 2026 Draft scored 25 points (9-of-25 from the field) in the Mavericks’ 116-103 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Cooper Flagg, the first teenager in NBA history to score 30 or more points in three different games, the second rookie with the most games of at least 25 points, five rebounds and five assists (only Michael Jordan surpasses him in NBA history) and the youngest player to score 50 points in an NBA game, is vying with his former roommate Kon Knueppel (Charlotte Hornets) for the title of NBA Rookie of the Year.
Flagg’s statistics in his first NCAA season are 21.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists.
Why Cooper Flagg is the NBA’s great white hope and ‘the best export since lobster’
Cooper Flagg arrived in the NBA as the No. 1 pick in the 2025 Draft after being a star at Duke (NCAA) and a national figure since his days in high school (he made headlines when, at 16, he brought forward his jump to the NBA by a year).
Carlos Boozer, a former Duke player with a long NBA career, admitted that “Cooper Flagg has exceeded some of the expectations we had.”
Analyst Clay Travis defines Cooper Flagg as “one of the best American-born basketball players we’ve seen in a long, long time. He has no ceiling.”
Jay Bilas, an analyst for ESPN, made a curious comparison to highlight the talent of the prodigy from Newport, Maine: “Cooper Flagg is the most impactful export from Maine since lobster.”
Jeff Teague, a former NBA player, predicted that Cooper Flagg would be the number one pick in the draft “for everything that comes with him. To be honest, he’s a great white hope. A white guy and athletic like that had the potential to be a star.”
Klay Thompson said of Cooper Flagg that “his potential is limitless. He has all the tools to be great.”
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