Cooper Flagg is collecting hardware faster than he can find shelf space.
The Dallas Mavericks rookie was unanimously selected to the NBA All-Rookie First Team for the 2025-26 season, the latest in a string of honors that already includes Rookie of the Year. Flagg averaged 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.2 steals as the No. 1 overall pick made the transition from Duke to the league look like one of the easiest in recent memory.
Those numbers are the punchline. The fact that Flagg became the first rookie since Michael Jordan to lead his team in points, rebounds, assists, and steals is the actual story.
Comparing anyone to Michael Jordan is the kind of thing you do not say lightly. The fact that the comparison fits at all tells you something about what Flagg just pulled off in his first NBA season. He stepped into a Mavericks team that had its star traded away the year before, a starting point guard injured for the entire season in Kyrie Irving, and a fan base that was still processing the loss of Luka Doncic. He was supposed to be a piece of the rebuild. He turned out to be the rebuild.
Dallas finished the season as a play-in team that nobody wanted to face. They missed the playoffs but had a real puncher’s chance late in the year. Flagg was the reason. The 19-year-old took on a workload that would have crushed most rookies and got better as the season went on. By the final month, he was being talked about as a top-15 player in the league.
The unanimous All-Rookie selection is the bare minimum for a player who did what Flagg did. Nobody on the panel was going to leave him off. The bigger conversation now is about which All-NBA selections he gets next year, and how soon he becomes a perennial MVP candidate.
The Mavericks have spent the offseason trying to figure out how to maximize the Cooper Flagg era. The lottery just gave them the No. 9 pick in the 2026 draft. Kyrie Irving is reportedly close to 100 percent in his ACL recovery. New president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri has been working on the long-term plan. The pieces around Flagg are starting to come together.
That said, the West is brutal. The Spurs just made the Finals with another generational young player in Victor Wembanyama. The Thunder still have Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Nuggets still have Nikola Jokic. The Timberwolves still have Anthony Edwards. The Lakers added Luka. The bar for being a real contender in the conference is impossibly high.
Flagg’s job is to keep developing. He has already shown he can be the best player on a team that scrapes its way into the playoff conversation. Now he has to show he can be the best player on a team that wins playoff series.
The Mavericks also still have to figure out the Kyrie situation. Trade rumors have followed him all spring. If Dallas decides to keep him and build around the Kyrie-Flagg backcourt, this team becomes interesting fast. If they move him, the rebuild gets longer.
Either way, Cooper Flagg is the centerpiece. The Mavericks won the lottery in 2025 and got the guy they have to build around for the next decade.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
