Our SBN colleague Ricky O’ Donnell has a breakdown of his Top Seven rookies in the preseason and three of them are former Blue Devils.
Here’s O’ Donnell’s list:
#7 – Jeremiah Fears
#6 – VJ Edgecombe
#5 – Khaman
Maluach
#4 – Jase Richardson
#3 – Kon Knueppel
#2 – Ace Bailey
#1 – Cooper Flagg
The video of Maluach suggests that his rapid growth at Duke has not slowed down because he’s doing things here we didn’t see last season. Part of that may have by design, but still, we’re seeing skills we didn’t see last season. He’s really growing fast.
In Knueppel’s case, he’s exactly what we got used to at Duke, but for a lot of people, he was in Flagg’s shadow. As O’ Donnell says here, he just knows how to play.
Then there’s Flagg. Over the summer, we heard a lot of doubts about his game, and lately we’ve heard nothing but excitement.
The swings between Cooper hype and Cooper doubt can give you whiplash, but we know what we saw at Duke, and he’s still just 18.
What we’ve been really impressed with is that Flagg has been asked to basically run point and he’s turned out to be a far better passer than we saw at Duke. Part of that may be that, like Maluach, he might have been asked to or not do certain things, and part of it may be that, for the first time, he’s playing every day with guys who are at or beyond his level and he’s elevating his game accordingly.
Whatever it is, he’s clearly taken his game up a level or two. Dallas has a lot of work to do and Flagg is not a finished product at this point, at least as far as the NBA goes, because these players are the bleeding edge of the game.
That many of them are highly impressed with Flagg really tells you what you need to know.
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