It wasn’t the prettiest NBA Summer League debut for Cooper Flagg on Thursday night.
The Dallas Mavericks rookie and first overall pick had a tough night shooting, finishing 5-21 from the floor with 10 points.
But as he has proven time and again, the phenom from Newport, Maine, has a knack for piling up the only stat that truly matters: wins.
It may have been an off night shooting for Flagg, but he turned it on defensively at a critical moment in the Mavericks’ Summer League opener against the Los Angeles Lakers.
With just over a minute left in the fourth quarter and his team down two points, Flagg provided a pivotal block and then followed it up with an assist in transition on a three-point shot by teammate Ryan Nembhard. That ended up being the game winner for Dallas, and wouldn’t have been possible without Flagg’s hustle on both ends of the floor.
Dallas won 87-85.
Flagg was asked about his performance in a postgame interview with ESPN.
“Not up to my standard,” he responded. “But I’m going to regroup, I’m going to be alright.”
As Flagg acknowledged, NBA basketball is a “different game” compared to college with a different feel, pace and spacing. Even for someone like Flagg who excelled at the upper echelon of college basketball, this is another level entirely.
While Thursday night’s shooting stats may get the most attention, Flagg still managed six rebounds, four assists, three steals and that timely block to help power Dallas to victory. He also showed some explosiveness around the rim, including on his first professional points via an emphatic breakaway dunk.
The way that Flagg packed the stat sheet in his freshman season at Duke University — leading the Blue Devils in all five major statistical categories — may have lulled many of us into expecting constant perfection from an 18-year-old who is still developing as a basketball player, and will now have to adapt to playing against the best competitors on the planet.
But as Flagg showed once again Thursday night, a relentless drive to win can very quickly eclipse a slow shooting performance. Flagg’s longtime player development coach Matt MacKenzie probably knows Flagg’s competitiveness as well as anyone, and it’s worth remembering what MacKenzie told the Bangor Daily News in March.
“His competitiveness is what fuels him. And his will to win just makes him so much better,” MacKenzie said about Flagg. “So he can be having an off shooting night but he’s going to find areas where he can impact the game in other ways.”
That’s exactly what happened down the stretch Thursday night against the Lakers. For much of the game, it seemed like Flagg’s shot wasn’t really there for him. But like many times before, he showed that his will to win doesn’t take a night off.
