When Wednesday’s game with Indiana began, I thought the worst news for the Mavericks, beyond their 1-3 record, was the report that Cooper Flagg had placed fourth in the first week of Kia Rookie of the Year rankings in the NBA.
Maybe you weren’t overly alarmed by this. Maybe, like me, you didn’t know such a thing as a weekly Kia Rookie of the Year rankings even existed. But I do know the basketball world marveled at the Mavericks’ luck in securing the first pick after having just a 1.8% chance to win the lottery last May. And I know there was never a doubt in anyone’s minds that that pick would be Flagg, so maybe we need to give him more time — 10 games maybe? — before casting too many harsh judgments his way.
Flagg contributed 15 points, 10 rebounds and four assists in the Mavericks’ 109-107 win over the Indiana Pacers, who may be the only team with more serious injuries than Dallas. And it’s possible the Mavericks caught them in that regard when Anthony Davis played just seven minutes before limping to the bench after an awkward landing at the offensive end.
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While patience is the only way to go with Flagg, the Mavericks have no time for it with Davis. He was playing with an Achilles injury and may have just made things a whole lot worse, which, for him, could only mean missing an astronomical number of games.
“Left lower leg soreness,” head coach Jason Kidd said after the game. ”We’ll see how he feels going forward.”
We won’t know more on Davis for a few more hours or perhaps days. If it’s bad, it’s bad, but it’s neither unprecedented nor unexpected. The idea that Davis would lead this team right up until the moment his injured sidekick, Kyrie Irving, returns from knee surgery was foolish to begin with. Davis is in his 13th season, Irving his 14th and both have missed hundreds of games with injuries.
This team belongs to Flagg — sometime in the near future and maybe sooner than planned for the general manager who was counting on Davis and Irving and a misplaced “defense wins championships” mantra to cause fans to forget the Luka Doncic trade.
Not going to happen now. Was never going to happen, anyway.
So it’s on to Flagg, whose start through five games has been quieter than you might have anticipated after he was all-everything last year at Duke. Through five games he’s delivering 13.4 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game.
Yes, that’s about a decent half for Luka, but no one said he was the second coming of that.
“Before the season’s done, you’ll see everything out of him,” visiting Indiana coach Rick Carlisle said. “His versatility, size, dynamic, the fact that he’s playing point guard is a strong enough statement. He shoots the ball, and he’s making kind of off-the-fly plays in real time, seeing things in a split second’s notice. That’s pretty amazing.”
Flagg‘s somewhat pedestrian numbers are partly a function of scoring two points in 31 minutes against Oklahoma City Monday night. The Thunder, of course, are the defending NBA champions and, rather clearly, the best defensive team in the league.
Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg (32) throws down a fourth quarter dunk against the Washington Wizards at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, October 24, 2025.
Tom Fox / Staff Photographer
“I think we all agree that wasn’t his best game,” Kidd said, “but this is new to him and he’s got to work through all that. I think for him to work through a back-to-back [he had his best game, 22 points in 29 minutes, against Toronto Sunday] with the mindset of getting better is something. There’s a lot to it.
“Back-to-back [games], being able to run the show [as a point guard], being on tape now, you know he just has to go through it.”
The learning curve is topped by the fact that Flagg is younger than those who might contend with him for the Rookie of the Year (and might not, depending upon how the season plays out). Flagg is 18 and doesn’t turn 19 until December. He may have looked like a polished pro in leading Duke to the Final Four last spring, but he’s just a kid, the youngest guy in the gym night after night.
Philadelphia’s V.J. Edgecombe, who happened to carry the distinction of that No. 1 standard in those Kia rankings, is averaging 22 points a night for the Sixers. He was a good player at Baylor last year and turned 20 this summer. Lake Highland‘s Tre Johnson (by way of one high-scoring season at Texas) is scoring 14.8 per night for the Wizards and had 17 here in a win over Dallas Friday. He and the Spurs’ Dylan Harper are 19, closest to Flagg in age, while Memphis’ Cedric Coward, who was ranked second this week and has the highest points per minutes average, turned 22 last month.
These additional months and years make a world of difference for those just beginning to understand the challenge of the NBA.
“The rookie class is pretty good when you look around the league,’’ Kidd said. “Some might be a little older than Cooper so they’ve seen a little more.
“But I think Cooper’s up for this challenge, and I think it’s all right to fail because you’ve got another day to come to work to be great.”
And greatness doesn’t always show its face right away in this league.
It was 26 years ago that the Mavericks added a highly touted rookie from Germany named Dirk Nowitzki to the mix, hoping he could turn into some kind of scoring threat along with being 7 feet tall.
He was almost a full two years older than Flagg is when he joined the NBA. He averaged 8.2 points per game for the season, made 40% of his field goals and just under 21% from the 3-point line. And he wasn’t even a second-team all-Rookie pick at the end of that 1999 season.
I don’t know if Dirk ever slipped into the top 10 of the Kia Rookie rankings that year. I’m not entirely sure they made Kias 26 years ago. But his career turned out just fine. There’s a street outside the AAC with his name on it.
“I remember in Dirk’s first few years, there were a lot of comparisons to other guys,” Carlisle said. “And you know, that is a rough way to go. So [Flagg] is a great young player. I mean his disposition, personality, effect, all that stuff is, like, you know, serious business. And it’s pretty, pretty cool.’’
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The Mavs lost Anthony Davis for the night but saw big performances from Brandon Williams and Dwight Powell.
More bad timing for the Mavericks, who are already without centers Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford.
The Mavericks will play their eighth game in Mexico City on Saturday, facing the Detroit Pistons at Arena CDMX.
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