Brotherhood Draft Watch: Differing Opinions On Cooper Flagg
Our money is on Bilas here.
There is a very interesting difference of opinion between two basketball minds on the future of Cooper Flagg.
Destined to be the the number one pick in June’s NBA Draft, Flagg’s freshman season at Duke earned a lot of respect, but not universally as former Boston Celtic Tony Allen said this:
“I don’t think Cooper Flagg’s going to turn a franchise around like that,” Allen said, according to LarryBrownSports.com. “I ain’t seeing KD. I’m just not seeing all that. I’m seeing Andrei Kirilenko.
Is he right? Only time will tell, but Jay Bilas strongly disagrees, saying this: “He’s 18 years old, and there are not many guys that play that way at 18 very often. He’s as complete a player, and he’s the best freshman Duke’s ever had, and that’s saying something… He’s the real deal. His level of competitiveness, especially at that age, is kinda hard to fathom. He impacts the game on both ends.”
“He’s not only a two-way player; he’s a great player on each end of the floor… He’s the real prize in this one. There are gonna be other guys that are gonna be great values and I’m sure gonna have great careers, but there is no other player that’s gonna go number one.”
You can catch the whole video here.
We’re biased, but we’re going with Bilas here, at least partly because of his comments when Stephen Curry was drafted in 2009. Someone questioned Curry’s athleticism and Bilas paused briefly and said...”you do understand that he’s exceptionally smart, right?”
Most of us honestly lack the tools to make a high-level analysis, but Bilas has a keen basketball mind. That’s not to say that he’ll always be right and Allen will always be wrong, but the odds do trend in that direction in this case.