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The headline on Brian Windhorst’s latest column for ESPN reads: “Why Cooper Flagg’s ascension is starting to feel inevitable.”
In it, Windhorst argues that the NBA media ecosystem has been a little slow in recognizing Flagg’s ascension, stopping just short of declaring the second-year stud ready to “take the NBA by storm.”
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That he penned a column to that effect is notable, as Windy’s time is spent to a greater and greater degree behind a microphone or in front of a camera these days. He simply doesn’t write as many columns now, so Monday’s look is evidence that Windhorst thinks Flagg’s development and potential in year two is a particularly important story, league-wide.
It makes sense. A lot of the big-name star power in the NBA has been shipped out east. The Mavericks as a franchise, remain, shovel in hand, digging their way out of a mountain of their own make, and are not particularly attractive to a national television audience as currently constructed. All this leads to a downward pressure on Flagg’s media attention.
But Windy (and others, to be fair) stays beating the Cooper Flagg drum this preseason.
ESPN Analyst Brian Windhorst is all in on Cooper Flagg. Welcome to The Resistance, Windy. | Screenshot from ESPN
On Sept. 25, it was a segment on ESPN’s NBA Today, where Windy issued it glowingly and effusively:
“I feel like there’s not enough hype around Cooper Flagg,” he said. “I know it’s hard to say because he was tracked at Duke very closely, but because Victor Wembanyama took that giant step forward last year, and really took the league by the throat, and because there was so much attention to the tanking teams going for the 2026 Draft, and the Mavericks themselves became one of the tanking teams at the end, I don’t think people realized how breathtaking Cooper Flagg’s performance was last season. He absolutely reminded me, on an almost nightly basis, of LeBron as a rookie. All the way back to the fact that LeBron was forced to play point guard as a rookie, and that kind of took him out of his game a little bit like it did with Cooper last year. The ability for someone of his size to play multi…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/espn-brian-windhorst-won-t-153245395.html
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Publish date : 2026-10-14 15:32:00
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