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After a fantastic rookie season, the natural next question regarding Cooper Flagg is, just how good can he be? Specifically, can he become good enough to be the best player on a championship team? He has a lot of promising attributes — defensive intuition, scoring with physicality, touch unprecedented for a kid his age and a growth rate higher than 99 percent of teenagers. The glaring hole in his game is the 3-point shot, something that he made at just 29.5 percent last season. It would be easy to say that to get to the next level, he needs to become a great shooter. I would argue, however, that that isn’t necessary. Becoming a league-average shooter is fine, but he really needs to lean into what he does best: score in the paint.
If you watched Flagg at all last year, you would know the most obvious part of his game was his control and pace going downhill. He was not just good at driving for a rookie — he was among the league’s best at scoring on the way to the basket. Of players who drove at least 12 times per game (Flagg was at 12.8), he was seventh in the NBA in points per drive (0.71). This was partially due to the physicality he displayed and his ability to get to his spots at will, but a lot of it had to do with his touch in the paint. According to NBA.com, Flagg took the sixth-most non-rim paint field goals, and shot them at just above 47 percent:
For someone his age, playing in a conference with guys like Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgren, and Rudy Gobert patrolling the paint, that is incredibly impressive. He never shied away from driving into the league’s finest shot-blockers, evidenced most clearly by the below highlight Giannis Antetokounmpo for a crucial late-game finish:
We know he is great from 15 feet and in. But, in a space-and-chuck league, why would he not try to get his 3-point shot up to 40 percent on volume? Well, let’s look at the last seven non-Steph Curry NBA Finals MVPs and what they did in the regular season from three:
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Player
3P%
3PA
Jalen Brunson, 2026
36.9
7.1
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, 2025
37.5
5.7
Jaylen Brown, 2024
35.4
5.9
Nikola Jokic, 2023
38.3
2.2
Giannis Antetokounmpo,…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/cooper-flagg-lean-ability-score-110300264.html
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Publish date : 2026-07-13 11:03:00
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