After watching Cooper Flagg's impressive NBA adjustment on his way to Rookie of the Year honors this season, it's easy to forget he is still 19 years old.
Rewind a few years, and recall that the Dallas Mavericks star was originally part of the 2025 high school class, going head-to-head for several years against AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer and Darryn Peterson, each of whom is expected to go in the top three in the draft next week. Flagg, who reclassified to graduate high school in 2024, is roughly the same age (or in some cases, younger) than many of the top freshmen in this draft class.
What if Flagg had stuck to his original high school class, played at Duke last season and entered the 2026 draft? How would he stack up vs. a loaded group of prospects? Would he still have gone No. 1?
Yes, this is a tricky exercise in hindsight -- especially after he just averaged 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game. In my mind, the answer is simple.
For the sake of the exercise -- and with early returns in the 2025 draft quite promising -- here's a combined ranking on how I would stack up the top five prospects from each class, based on how I rated them coming out of college:
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1. Cooper Flagg, F, Duke
Rank in 2025 class: No. 1 Current team: Dallas Mavericks
2024-25 college stats: 19.2 PPG, 7.5 RPG, 4.2 APG, 59.3% TS, 14.9 BPM
Knowing what we knew then -- and what we know now -- Flagg is the clear No. 1 in this group. There were so few holes in his overall profile that the question was always about what level of heights he'd reach, not about whether he would succeed in the NBA. He finished college on a growth trajectory, with good indicators that he'd develop not only as a shooter, but also as an all-around scorer, and was extremely young for his level with solid positional size.
In my mind and in the eyes of many around the NBA, the real piece of what made Flagg a special prospect was his intangibles: his competitiveness and consistency of production and effort manifested in every sense. It was unique that his defense always came before his offense -- something he took pride in. Not many young stars enter the league as fully-fledged two-way players -- Flagg had a leg up on his peers before he even accepted the challenge of being Duke's No. 1 option.
While Flagg's offensive game wasn't always aesthetically pleasing, the results were often there, particularly in the win column. And while his growth areas remain the same -- he shot just 29.5% from 3-point range as a rookie in Dallas this season -- it certainly wasn't a given that he'd walk into the NBA as a 20 PPG scorer. Truly elite prospects tend to smash expectations at every stop, particularly during these key growth years and level adjustments, and the case with Flagg has always been the same -- he may just be a little bit different than everyone else.