MACAO, China -- A few Dallas Mavericks veterans have been keeping up the ruse that Cooper Flagg is still wearing some sort of "trainee" name tag. That the 2025 No. 1 pick is technically a rookie until he plays the first game of his second season.
This played out with various menial duties for the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year -- bag-carrying and the like -- during the team's week in China for two preseason games against the Houston Rockets. "I can sometimes sneak by without them remembering that they want me to be a rookie still. But yeah, they definitely try," Flagg said.
This notion, of course, is ridiculous on its face. Flagg played just 45 minutes in two games in Macao but scored 33 points with 10 rebounds, 10 assists, three steals and two blocks. He hunted for his shot and looked to set up his teammates with the kind of assurance that obliterates the concept that he's a rookie.
But it's not just what you can count or see. Flagg's voice echoed through the arena inside The Venetian Macao, and he's vocally involved in the game, showing how quickly he is graduating from worrying about his own game to broadening his scope by including everyone else's. He's barreling down the runway toward superstardom like the many fully loaded cargo jets taking off from the adjacent Hong Kong International Airport.
This kind of growth creates goosebumps.
"I'm just finding my voice," Flagg said. "Being so young and a little bit inexperienced is tough sometimes, but I think up to this point, I've earned the respect of my teammates, and I've gotten that sense that they really respect me and my opinion."
For a player who has been on the basketball world's radar since he was 16, was a star at Duke and then won the NBA's top rookie honor, it feels possible that Flagg's quickening maturation might be a tad underrated at the moment. It doesn't help that the Mavericks, mired in a deep Western Conference, aren't exactly demanding attention.
But everything about Flagg is starting to feel inevitable.
There's a lot going on in the NBA: LeBron James is in Philadelphia. Giannis Antetokounmpo is in Miami. Victor Wembanyama has claimed the unofficial "future face of the league" designation and is looking for revenge after Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks, the big-market darlings, grabbed rightful attention by ending their 52-year title drought.
But for a week in Macao for the NBA's China Games, Flagg was the headliner. His image was plastered on the side of buildings and the focus of a big shoe event. Inside one of Macao's glittering high-end, marble-wrapped malls, he unveiled his personal New Balance logo (his initials combined with the silhouette of a pine tree, a nod to his home state of Maine).