Rookie Of The Year Momentum May Have Moved From Knueppel To Flagg

This year’s Rookie of the Year race, so far anyway, has been quite unusual since the two leading candidates were teammates last year: former Blue Devils Kon Knueppel and Cooper Flagg.

For most of the season, Knueppel’s strikingly mature game has had him out front of Flagg as the Charlotte Hornets began to plan around their stud rookie.

Meanwhile, Flagg, asked to play point guard, struggled more. He didn’t begin to excel until the Dallas Mavericks began to ask less of him. And then he began to show just how unusual he is.

Like Knueppel, Flagg is exceptionally mature for a rookie and he’s really starting to hit his stride.

Not that Knueppel is slacking off. At the beginning of the season, he looked like a guy who would be a superb complementary player, but now he’s playing with far more aggression. At one point, someone posted that he was getting all his points off of assists, to which we say: so what? Those points don’t count less than unassisted baskets.

It was an interesting point though, and lately, Knueppel has been far more aggressive and you seem him taking guys to the basket much more often. Like Luka Doncic, he’s never going to be the fastest guy in the league, but also like Doncic, he’s outsmarting his defenders, often with surprising ease.

Whatever happens, watching two former roommates battle it out for the most prestigious award a rookie can win is pretty amazing.