For months prior to the 2025 NBA Draft, it was clear that, regardless of which team won the Draft Lottery, Cooper Flagg was overwhelmingly likely to be the No. 1 overall pick. That projection came to fruition when the Dallas Mavericks unexpectedly jumped up to No. 1 and, for the most part, Flagg has hit the ground running.
Approximately half of his rookie season is over, as the Mavericks have played 40 games and Flagg has appeared in 39 of those 40 contests. To date, he is the betting favorite for Rookie of the Year honors, though his college teammate, Kon Knueppel, is certainly in the conversation as mid-January arrives. Overall, Flagg has been excellent as a rookie, even before adjusting to the reality that he is (very) young, playing two months of his NBA career at the age of 18. When taking that into account, his performance is all the more impressive.
Through 39 games, Flagg is averaging 19.1 points, 6.4 rebounds, 4.3 assists, and 2.1 stocks per game. After a rough start as a perimeter shooter, he has taken a step forward in shooting 35 percent from 3-point range since the beginning of December. Flagg is also a standout defender by rookie standards, and his ability to attack the rim with vigor is a great sign for his star-driven future.
In this space, we'll take a glance at how the five most recent No. 1 overall picks stack up to Flagg through half of their rookie seasons, revealing that Flagg is on a fantastic overall trajectory.
2024 - Zaccharie Risacher
Caveats should apply to Risacher in a number of ways. For one, the 2024 NBA Draft was universally understood to be without the "traditional" No. 1 overall pick, so it isn't as if expectations should've been that Risacher was on a superstar path. With that out of the way, he was underwhelming in the first half of his rookie season. Risacher played only 23.7 minutes per game in the first half for a competitive Hawks team, and he put up 10.5 points on middling efficiency. To be fair, Risacher did come alive in the back half of his rookie campaign on the way to No. 2 honors in Rookie of the Year, but Flagg is a different caliber of prospect.
2023 - Victor Wembanyama
It was very quickly apparent to the entire basketball world that Wembanyama was a generational talent. Similarly to Flagg, his perimeter efficiency waned early in his rookie season, but Wembanyama averaged 19.8 points, 10.1 rebounds, and 3.1 blocks per game in his first 40 outings while playing fewer than 29 minutes per game. His defense was utterly dominant right away, and Wembanyama is the rare prospect that was actually seen as being better than Flagg, at least by most people, as they entered the league.
2022 - Paolo Banchero
Unlike Flagg and Wembanyama, Banchero was in a real race for No. 1 overall, but the Magic tabbed him and immediately felt positive returns for that choice. Banchero went on to win Rookie of the Year honors, and he averaged 20.8 points and 6.4 rebounds per game in the first half of his rookie campaign. Like most first-year guys, efficiency was a question, but Banchero was ahead of the game in comparison to most rookies. He wasn't the defensive player that Flagg already is, but the production is similar.
2021 - Cade Cunningham
Cunningham is now an All-NBA player, but his rookie season was probably short of the expectations that at least some held for him. He did earn All-Rookie honors, but Cunningham put up 15.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.2 assists on 40/33/86 shooting splits in the first half of that season. Make no mistake, that is rock-solid by any rookie standard, but Flagg is ahead of where Cunningham was at this juncture.
2020 - Anthony Edwards
Because of the delays forced by COVID, the "middle" of Edwards' rookiei season didn't arrive until late March. Still, he put up 16.8 points per game in his first 41 outings. There was a raging debate about Edwards and LaMelo Ball during the elongated 2020 NBA Draft cycle, but Edwards was the right choice. That may not have been immediately clear, but it is now. When comparing Flagg and Edwards, the returns are fairly similar. Flagg actually has the efficiency and defensive edges, though Edwards was probably carrying a big workload given the team situation. It's an interesting head-to-head comparison at this early juncture.