Mavs Best Bet: Cooper Flagg Has an All-NBA Case to Make

The list is short enough to read in a single breath. Robinson. Shaq. Penny. Duncan. Yao. LeBron. Wade. Griffin. Lillard. Doncic.

Ten players since 1989 have made an All-NBA team in their second NBA season. Most are enshrined in Springfield. The rest will be. The last one wore a Mavericks jersey in 2019-20 and spent the next five years as the best offensive player in basketball.

DraftKings thinks Cooper Flagg has a chance to make it 11. The Mavericks star sits at +600 to make any All-NBA team this season, with First Team priced at +8000.

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He turns 20 in December.

So the bar is steep. Here is what would have to go right.

The jumper is the whole thing. Flagg shot about 34% from 3-point range as a rookie on significant volume, which is survivable but not the mark of a top-15 player. Defenses sagged off him in spots and dared him to shoot, which made his drives harder and clogged the floor for everyone else. If that number climbs toward 38% or 39%, Flagg becomes nearly impossible to defend because the rest of his game already works.

All-NBA voting also rewards winning consistently and players on lottery teams rarely crack those 15 spots regardless of production. Most projections have the Mavericks finishing outside the playoff picture and if that holds, Flagg could average 25 points per game and still get passed over for someone on a 50-win roster. He probably needs Dallas in the play-in conversation at minimum.

Availability matters, too. The 65-game minimum is a hard requirement for postseason awards and Flagg played 70 games as a rookie while missing time with a foot injury and finishing the year with a sprained ankle. Staying on the floor through an 82-game schedule is a prerequisite here.

Then there is the competition, which is the part outside his control. All-NBA has been positionless since 2023-24, meaning Flagg competes against every guard and center in the league, not just forwards. He does not need to outplay all of them. He needs to be clearly better than two or three players voters have been penciling in for years.

Which brings this to Kyrie Irving and the way his return cuts against conventional logic.

Adding a second star usually costs a young player counting stats and counting stats drive award voting. Flagg will almost certainly have the ball less with Irving back from his torn ACL.

But what Flagg carried last season was not sustainable for a teenager. He was the primary creator on a team without a real initiator, forced into difficult shots because nobody else could generate offense. His usage was enormous and his efficiency paid for it.

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Irving changes that entirely. Flagg gets to attack closeouts rather than manufacture offense from scratch. He gets cleaner looks because defenses have to account for one of the best shot creators in the league. He can work as a cutter and finisher on possessions where he used to be the entire plan.

The realistic outcome this season is an All-Star selection, which would represent healthy progress for a 20-year-old. All-NBA is the stretch goal and at +600, the market is calling it unlikely but plausible.