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DALLAS — This was a night Cooper Flagg figures he’ll be talking about with his Duke roommate Kon Knueppel for decades.
That’s probably true for almost everyone in the American Airlines Center who witnessed the thrilling shootout Thursday night in the first NBA meeting between the Rookie of the Year frontrunners.
Flagg, the No. 1 pick, had 49 points, the most in NBA history by a teenager, breaking the Dallas Mavericks rookie record he shared with Mark Aguirre, whose No. 24 was retired in a halftime ceremony during the game.
But Knueppel, the No. 4 pick, finished with 34 points and made the critical plays in the final moments to allow the Charlotte Hornets to walk away with the 123-121 win, their fifth straight. He forced a Flagg turnover with 7.6 seconds remaining and hit the game-winning free throws after drawing a foul on his friend in transition.
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Flagg’s tightly contested jumper bounced off the back of the rim at the buzzer.
“Just a crazy ending to a phenomenal game,” Knueppel said. “He was the best player on the floor tonight. Probably, I mean, that’s the best player that’s played against us all season. It’s just fun competing against the best, and obviously being close with him, that kind of adds to the competitiveness. So it was really fun.”
Flagg (-400) and Knueppel (+280) entered the night with the best odds to win Rookie of the Year, according to DraftKings, creating a unique buzz around a late-January game between two teams sitting below the play-in section of their respective conference standings. They more than met the anticipation by becoming the first pair of college teammates to each score at least 30 points while playing against each other as rookies.
According to ESPN Research, their combined 83 points are the most by a pair of rookies in a game since Tiny Archibald and Pete Maravich scored a total of 91 in 1971.
“It’s incredible,” Flagg said of competing against his college roommate for Rookie of the Year. “I wouldn’t want to be in any other position. We’ll both be looking back on this night and this whole year in general for the rest of our lives, and we’ll be talking about it and stuff like that. It’s just so special to have this opportunity in general.”
Knueppel anticipates his odds to win that honor got a little bit longer due to Flagg’s record-setting performance.
“We’d both like to win, but we don’t talk about it,” said Knueppel, who is averaging 18.9 points with an effective field goal percentage of 61.1%, the best efficiency ever by a rookie who scored that much. “I mean, this was a heck of a game. I think he’s probably going to jump me with 49 and 10 [rebounds], but it is what it is. An award like that is cool, but whoever gets it, I’ll be happy for him. “Who knows? I’m just glad we got the win. That matters more to me than anything else.”
Knueppel, who was 10-of-16 from the floor, set a Hornets franchise rookie record with eight 3-pointers on 12 attempts. He started off sizzling, making his first three long-range attempts in the opening four-plus minutes of the game.
“It’s not good,” Flagg said, recalling his thoughts as Knueppel got off to a hot start. “I played with him last year, and when he sees some easy ones go in to start the game, it’s never a good thing. That’s how it is with a lot of great shooters. You never want to let him tee up open shots and start a game and get into a rhythm.”
Flagg, who moved past Knueppel as the rookie scoring leader at 19.5 points per game, got rolling in the second quarter with 23 points. He had 40 by the end of the third, joining LeBron James and Anthony Edwards as the only teenagers in NBA history to record multiple 40-point performances.
Flagg Rising Up
The Mavericks’ Cooper Flagg on Thursday night became the ninth rookie post-merger (1976-77) with multiple 40-point games:
SeasonRookie40-Pt Games1984-85Michael Jordan71996-97Allen Iverson52025-26Cooper Flagg22020-21Anthony Edwards22017-18Donovan Mitchell22010-11Blake Griffin21981-82Jay Vincent21979-80Larry Bird21977-78Bernard King2– ESPN Research
The stage was set for Flagg to finish his spectacular performance in storybook fashion after he swished a game-tying pull-up 3 with 33.5 seconds left and grabbed a defensive rebound on the ensuing possession. But the Hornets schemed to keep Flagg from being the hero, doubling him to force the ball out of his hands as he dribbled several feet above the 3-point arc. Knueppel timed his double-team well, deflecting Flagg’s pass, and their fellow former Duke teammate Sion James saved the ball to Knueppel to start a fast break.
“By no surprise, our guy ends up making the biggest play of the game down the stretch and just continue to impact winning,” said Hornets coach Charles Lee, who praised Knueppel’s defensive effort pregame. “[He had] the instincts to come and double team, seeing a situation where the floor is balanced in a way that that’s probably the right spot to bring a double. A guy has 49 points, so you want to try to slow him down, obviously, and make somebody else at the beat at that point of the game.”
Flagg, the league’s youngest player at 19, took fault for poor execution with the game on the line.
“I’m trying to learn still end-of-game situations,” said Flagg, who swapped jerseys postgame with Hornets rookie Liam McNeeley, his high school teammate at Montverde Academy. “I’m always trying to get better. That’s something, I don’t want to say I struggle with, but I have seen a ton of double teams and stuff, so just figuring out how I can be effective in those moments. It’s got to be a lot better.”
Flagg finished 20-of-29 from the floor, becoming the first rookie with at least 20 buckets since Milwaukee’s Brandon Jennings had 21 in his 55-point performance in November 2009. Flagg was 3-of-5 from 3-point range, but he did the vast majority of his damage in the paint, where he scored 28 points.
“He’s not about numbers. He’s about wins and losses,” Mavs coach Jason Kidd said. “That’s who he is. For a young man who thinks that way, he’s going to be a champion sooner than later. He continues to keep working. He tried to will his team to a win tonight.”
