Cooper Flagg Update

Things are looking good for the new NBA star

There are some various Cooper Flagg bits of news so we thought we’d put them together.

First, Tim Legler, who recently offered some insights on a potential Flagg weakness, his shooting form, now offers praise for his defense, saying this:

“[...T]he most important thing is his lateral movement as an on-ball defender and then as a weak side defender, the ground he covers and how smart he is in anticipating where he’s supposed to be next and then his activity level.

“Like he can make plays even when he’s beaten off the dribble because of his ability to recover and athletically he can still get up there and bother you...Not a lot of guys come into the league that are high profile players, they want to score, they want opportunities, they want touches, usually they’re on bad teams, their defense isn’t as important...[H]is defense is going to be something that’s gonna be scrutinized.”

It’s really not going to be much of a concern with one possible concern: Flagg is still a teenager and his body hasn’t matured. He’s going to get knocked around for a while until he muscles up. When he does though, he’ll more than hold his own.

We also learn here why he wore #2 at Duke - it was in honor of a late friend - and that he switched back to #32 to honor his mother, who wore it in high school. He wore it in high school but obviously 32 is off limits at Duke because of Christian Laettner’s spectacular career.

Finally, NBA2K26 is coming out soon and Flagg is part of one of the trailers, which is really pretty cool.