Jay Bilas on Mavs winning the lottery, Flagg’s play style & what to expect this season

KRLD-FM / 105.3 The Fan

Jay Bilas, a college basketball analyst for ESPN, discussed the wildest NBA Draft Lottery he’s ever seen and explained why Cooper Flagg is the real deal. He detailed what makes Flagg a generational talent and why Dallas hit the jackpot. Bilas also shared how Flagg's game is tailor-made for the modern NBA, calling him the best freshman Duke has ever had. He said Flagg will make an impact right away and be a strong contributor from day one.

Transcript

00:00Jay, you mentioned Grant Hill there.

00:16We've heard a lot of just various comparisons here for Cooper flag.

00:20And a lot of them sound like point forward comparisons,

00:23whether it's Pippen or Grant Hill or however you want to look at it.

00:26Is that the best fit you think for him immediately here in Dallas is,

00:29hey, bring him in while Kyrie's rehab and let him be kind of a point forward,

00:32maybe run the offense a little bit?

00:35Yeah, I mean, in the NBA, you don't really have to have a set-up guy point guard.

00:42You know, heck, Denver, Jokic brings the ball up.

00:44You know, it's not that big of a deal.

00:47I think with Dallas, you can have a number of different guys

00:51if they grab a rebound, can initiate something.

00:54But Flag's capable of doing that, and he's not going to come in.

00:57Like, he can come in and be a star-caliber player

01:00without being a star-caliber usage guy from a shot perspective.

01:06Like, he's not going to gobble up a bunch of shots,

01:09and people are going to go, hey, what's this?

01:10You know, he's not a volume shooter.

01:12He's a right playmaker.

01:15Like, he's a playmaker, but he makes the right play.

01:18And, like, early on in the season, there were people saying,

01:21okay, it looks like Conqueniple's going to be the leading scorer.

01:25And it wasn't that Flag was kind of settling in.

01:28It was that he kept making the right play,

01:30and it didn't mean scoring early on against some of the poor teams that Duke was playing.

01:36But later on in the season, you know, he gets 42 against Notre Dame

01:39and 30 against Arizona and all this stuff.

01:41You're going, okay, this guy's the real deal.

01:43I mean, it's ridiculous.

01:44I saw it in high school, but it's crazy how advanced he is at such a young age.

01:52Like, you just don't – I've never seen a player at Duke like that.

01:56And, honestly, going through, like, a catalog of players, I can't think of anybody.

02:01I'm going, well, this dude was ahead of him at this stage at 18.

02:05Or maybe LeBron, but that's going back a ways.

02:09And, you know, you're on a pretty high tier of players when you're talking about that.

Category

Transcript

Recommended