Cooper Flagg is Poised for a 2nd Year Leap

And Cooper Flagg is ready for a second year leap.

I know we've all, we're all excited about what he can do in this year.

The all-star term has been thrown around a lot.

We've talked about ratings a lot on the Locked On Mavs daily show.

And today I wanna get into the reasons why I think he's gonna make this all-star leap.

One, it's just so obvious in the way that he played last season.

Players come into their rookie season, and there are so many things to adjust to.

There's the amount of games.

Everyone to a man, every rookie, every second-year player is like, man, the amount of games you have to adjust to.

Going from, you know, 40 in college now to 82, traveling around as much as you do, just the adjustment to NBA life is such a big difference for these guys that that adjustment is massive.

Add on to the three-point line changing from college to the NBA is just a massive adjustment in both spacing.

Uh, lots of players come over and say, "Man, the spacing was great." Remember Luka in his first year was like, "Man, it's actually easier to score over here than, than it was in Europe because of the spacing." But your three-point shot, you know, is, is affected by that a lot, which is massive.

And so that's a huge thing.

I also think Cooper Flagg looks at the situation that he's in, and it's completely different than it was in year one.

The amount of pressure on Cooper Flagg, and I hope that it would have been alleviated by an Anthony Davis, by a Kyrie Irving return, by Jason Kidd kinda shielding him from some of those things.

He had none of those going for him last year.

None of them.

Anthony Davis goes down with, you know, 20 ga- you know, he only plays 20 games, has the injury coming into the season, the eye thing that was, was a, was an issue, and didn't play a lot.

Derrick Lively went down with, you know, with- within seven games.

Kyrie Irving never came back.

Jason Kidd threw him right into the fire and said, "You're gonna be the point guard from day one." It was like this immediate onslaught of like, "All right, here, we're gonna make you uncomfortable." Jason Kidd even specifically said, "We're gonna make you uncomfortable.

We wanna make him uncomfortable." And it, it probably helped him grow in some way, and Jason Kidd's togen- taken victory laps for that, and, and great.

G- continue on that.

But the amount of pressure that he faced in year one I think is massive, and a massive difference going into this year, where there's not a lot of expectations on the Mavericks.

The Mavericks have more talent.