NBA reporter Brian Windhorst thinks Cooper Flagg can one day be better than Luka Doncic. But is that even worth thinking about?
The Dallas Mavericks ultimately lucked their way into transitioning from one superstar franchise centerpiece to another in less than a year.
Trading Luka Doncic and winning the rights to draft Cooper Flagg are two separate, seismic moves to the roster, but it's important to remember that they did not happen because of one another in the way that many are portraying.
There's a growing dialogue that NBA media incorrectly tries to explain.
No, the Mavericks did not have Cooper Flagg in mind when former GM Nico Harrison traded five-time All-NBA First-Teamer Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for now-traded Anthony Davis.
There is no covering that up.
The Mavs wouldn't have landed Flagg, however, if it weren't for that catastrophic decision. The team tumbled their way into top-10 lottery odds without Doncic, and without Kyrie Irving as he tore his ACL the next month. Oh yeah, and Davis had his regular stretches on the sideline, too.
Now that Dallas captured the superstar-in-the-making rookie, the nationals want to believe that it's some sort of master sequence of events that the Mavs made to reverse the course of its organization, essentially swapping one out for another.
It couldn't be further from the truth, but ESPN's Brian Windhorst is the latest to pin Luka and Cooper against one another in this way.
Windhorst begins by rambling about how the Davis trade this week makes the Doncic one last February look worse, which is objectively true. AD missed nearly three-quarters of the Mavericks' games since he joined the team, and Doncic is the league's leading scorer in LA.
Dallas was right to "salary dump" Davis in order to fully embrace a team built around Flagg, all but acknowledging the vision of the former boss was greatly blurred.
But now comparing Flagg's brilliance to that of Doncic? Already?
And is that even a necessary point? Like it's supposed to clean up the mess, allow everyone to forget, and believe it's as if this was the plan all along? I'm not buying it.
Might Mavs fans believe that Flagg can one day be an MVP candidate and a championship-level competitor? There's no denying that possibility.
But would those fans keep that over the Doncic that they watched in Dallas? I think there's an obvious answer, though there are layers to that that don't need explaining.
It's true that the Mavericks are better off on this day in 2026 than they were in 2025, but the two defining moments within that stretch needn't result in a conversation of Luka versus Cooper.
Unfortunately, this is a slander quest Windhorst has been caught venturing before.
During the Mavs' NBA Finals run the summer of 2024 - in which Doncic was playing like the best player in the world and single-handily dragged a newly-built roster to the top - he was constantly ridiculed by Windhorst and others for his defense, claiming a factor into Dallas' gentleman's sweep loss - and thus any potential to win a title - fell on that side of the floor more than anything on the other end.
Doncic will never be a Kawhi Leonard architype, but his offensive abilities are generational to the point that every franchise would build their operation around his excellence if they could (unless they're run by Nico).
Flagg, no doubt, can be great. But will he make five straight First-Team All-NBA teams beginning next season? Is any part of his game looked at as transcendent in the sport? Not quite.
I will always love Doncic and what he brought to Dallas.
Similarly, I can already tell I will love Flagg for most of the same reasons.
And that coexistence can happen.
The Mavericks didn't "solve" the problem that faced them this time last year, but they are surely throwing their arms in praise for the blessing of a 19-year-old prodigy that fell in their lap to speedrun a rebuild.
As for the two pieces and their respective careers - that hardly intertwine - comparisons like these will create a rivalry that does not fit in this story, and would in turn, make it that much harder for fans to move on and embrace what each player is to the Mavericks.