Will Cain Country - Did The Mavericks Draft The Next MVP In Cooper Flagg Or The Next Scottie Pippen? (ft. Andy Bailey)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

On the Friday sports edition of 'Will Cain Country,' Will is joined by NBA Writer at Bleacher Report, Andy Bailey, to break down the NBA Draft, especially the selection of Cooper Flagg. Will asks, if Flagg isn’t elite at one specific skill, can he really be a number one player in the NBA? Bailey believes that Flagg’s competitiveness, IQ, and all-around game make him one of the safest, high-upside picks in years. They debate his fit in Dallas, his ceiling, and whether he's closer to an MVP in the making or just Scottie Pippin 2.0. Will also asks Andy his top NBA prospects from the last decade and where Flagg fits in that list, as well as how players like Jokic and Giannis slipped through the cracks, and whether the NBA is bad at spotting true talent or if projecting stardom is just harder in basketball. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to 'Will Cain Country' on YouTube here: Watch Will Cain Country! Follow Will on X: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash-brown and a small iced coffee for $5.00 plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Victor Wimbunyama, Zion Williamson, Luca Donji. Cooper Flagg? Where does he rank in the history, the recent history of NBA prospects? It is Will Cain Country normally streaming live every Monday through Thursday at 12 o'clock Eastern Time, but always available by subscribing at Apple or on Spotify.

As is this episode of Canaan Sports, Sports Exclusive, where we do a deep dive on the NBA draft. How does Cooper Flag rank in history? Is he can't miss? Is he the savior of the Dallas Mavericks? We get into all of that with the NBA writer at Bleacher Report, Andy Bailey. NBA writer for Bleacher Report, Andy Bailey joins us again here on Will Cain Country. What's up, man? Not much, just kind of recovering from a big first round of the draft and sorting through stuff, getting ready for round two. It's weird. We're in this, like, NFL thing now where it's stretched out over more than one day.

You know, it's interesting, and I'd be curious what the guys on the show think about this as well. I love drafts. Like, I read about drafts, Andy. I read mock drafts. And I do so for the NBA. I even take a look at some hockey drafts when I don't know any of the guys that we're talking about. But I like reading the guys and then projecting in like, oh, this guy sounds like somebody that would fit my team. But watching the NBA draft last night, it just is missing something from the experience of the NFL draft.

It's missing some kind of energy, which they try to make up for with like the fashion show of it all. But I don't know what it is, man. I don't know if it's name recognition. But the truth is, once you get beyond 10 picks in the NFL draft, those guys don't have wide name recognition either. So I don't know why, but the NBA draft just is missing something compared to the NFL. I think you're right. As you were framing that question, I had a couple ideas,

but you hit on something that I didn't consider, which is name recognition. And I think it's probably worse in the NBA because so many of these guys are from overseas. So even if you have like a diehard college basketball fan who wants to see where so-and-so goes in the draft, he's not going to know about Noah Essend gay or Hugo Gonzalez or some of the other names that you hear last night. I mean, I think the biggest reason that the NFL just feels like it has more cachet is because the league simply has more cachet. I mean, it's just so much more popular and accessible. to, you know, the everyday fan.

And so I think that's a big deal. And then the last thing that I thought of is, and I certainly wouldn't advocate for the NBA to do this, but I believe the NFL draft has 15 minutes per pick, right? At least in the first round. And the NBA has five. And so maybe that NFL production has a little bit more time to break down each pick, to go into the backstories of each guy,

bring a little bit more drama to the broadcast. the NBA, it just moves a little bit quicker, which again is fine with me, but in terms of like a TV product that gets a lot of people hooked, I can see why a little extra time might actually help. All right, I have two other reasons. One is built off name recognition. The fact that players can leave college, even setting aside the international guys, the fact that players can leave college after one year hurts name recognition.

And I'm not sitting here saying that shouldn't happen, but that's the price you pay with that. You're not building a brand and name recognition over three years. as you are in the NFL with a fan base that then wants to follow you or even just knows who you are. So you take a guy like Dylan Harper, who's the second overall pick from Rutgers going to the spurs. And the truth is his name recognition is very, very low, even though he's the son of NBA champion Ron Harper, which by the way, as much as I read and follow, I don't think I even really

knew that he was Ron Harper's son until draft cover. So you don't have the opportunity to build these guys into characters. And then I'm thinking through this one aloud, for me, there is a sense that once you get past the first three to four picks in the NBA draft, you're in total crapshoot mode, meaning there's a big bust rate in the NFL, and we know that. It's roughly 50% for the first round. But that doesn't rob anybody of feeling like their guy is going to be in the 50% success rate. So there's a general excitement about it from the fan base. And what I feel today is a Dallas Mavericks fan, very few fan bases get to feel that way after the NBA draft.

Spurs fans are probably excited. But after that, you know, Cooper Flagg, Dallas Mavericks. We'll talk about that more than a minute, but reinvigorates that fan base. Spurs fans should be pretty excited about Dylan Harper. But even at number three, I'm not sure Sixers fans today are waking up going, wow, what does VJ Edgecombe do for us this season

to change our prospects for an NBA? title. I think it's because the bust rate is so high in the NBA draft. Yeah, I think you're right on both of those fronts. On the first one, I have thought for a while, I kind of like the idea of bring back the preps to pros

for the NBA. I really don't think that one year of college does anybody any favors. I don't think it's good for the prospects necessarily. I really don't think it's good for the NCAA. So you bring that back and then you pair it with, if you do go to college, you've got to stay for two

or three years, whatever it is, even if it's just two. I mean, that's better than the one and done thing that's going on right now. And I think that would help with name recognition. I think it would help these college programs build more of a system and a culture. Of course, now we're in the NIL and like no more sitting out of year for transferring things. So who knows if any team can ever build a culture. But I think that would help on the first front, those two things. And then as far as the draft being a crapshoot i have thought a lot about this over the last 12 hours whenever i've been awake i should say um i see all of these instant reactions to the nba draft and i'm combing through stuff and i'm doing my own research and i just it just hit me so hard last night

nobody has any idea what's going to happen with any of these guys so i see a team get like a d plus on a top 10 pick and i just think you don't know I mean, you can make an educated guess, but it really is very up in the air every single year in the NBA draft. I'm not as much of a football guy, so I don't know how much this applies to the NFL, but in the NBA, all these guys were incredible in high school. Most of them were great in college. To really pop and separate yourself from your peers and your class once you get to the NBA, it has so much to do with the non-busy. basketball part of the player? Like, how bad does he want to be good? How competitive is he? How smart is he? And it has a ton to do with what team you end up on. If a prospect goes to a terrible

situation, his career could be doomed within two or three years if he had gone to some other team. Who knows? He could have been a 15-year rotation player. So I totally agree with you that it's so much more up in the air in the NBA than it seems to be in other sports. And I agree that I mean, the number's a little different every year. Like this year, I think it was a pretty good top three or four. Some of years it's top five or six. Some of years it's just one. But there's always a line in the draft where afterward it's like, who knows?

I mean, any of these guys could go either way. Okay, I want to explore those a little bit more before we get into some of the specific. So on the first point, that may be changing with NIL. So there may be guys that decide my financial future is more secure by staying in college for two or three years than trying to go into the NBA. I mean, the reports are that Cooper Flag, and he is such an outlier in this conversation, but made $28 million in his one year at Duke. He didn't make that from Duke. He made that from New Balance. But there will be teams in the new NIL landscape that say we're not a football school, so we're going to take a huge chunk of that $20 million cap and give it to

basketball. And some guys can make some real money playing college basketball. So that may change it without any forced rules to keep guys in longer or let them come out earlier to your point of preps to pros. On the bust thing, again, or the crapshoot nature of it, I want to be careful because, look, Tom Brady was a sixth round pick. But it just feels like it shouldn't be this hard in basketball to project a player into the NBA. Part of me goes, well, is that because it's such a leap?

Like, maybe it's not as big of a leap to go from college football to the NFL as it is to go from college basketball to the NBA. But I just think, like, how does Nicola Yolkich, a multiple-time league MVP, and you and I've had a discussion, if he may go down as one of the top five greatest players of all time, last until the second round. Like, what could they not see at that time, right?

Or we could do the same thing with Draymond Green. You know, we could even do it to a lesser extent with Janus Antecumpo, who lasted, I believe, to number 13 in his draft. And you're talking about transformative players, League MVP types, not just All-Stars. We're talking about guys that can't be stopped in the league. And somebody couldn't see that in the draft

and took guys that are out and out busts. I don't know. Maybe there's just way more projection involved that is harder to make and easier to miss when it comes to the NBA. Yeah, I think you hit on a lot of stuff that's probably true there. In terms of guys like Janice and Yokic, I think it's really sort of a case-by-case thing.

And you can see, I think at times NBA front offices maybe emphasize athleticism over skill a little bit more than they should, and maybe that's part of why they missed the boat on Yolkich. With Janice, they're watching film of him in Greece, playing in very dingy gyms, and it gets very subparred competition, and maybe they think that's not going to translate to the NBA.

So I think there are little nuggets with each one of these cases. that maybe suggest how this happened. How did they miss this just incredible talent? But one thing that's really hard to measure, especially with these international prospects, is what kind of person is this player? And in both of those cases, just extremely hard workers who come from pretty humble circumstances

relative to some of the guys who grow up playing AAU basketball and are now getting shoe deals when they're 18 or whatever, they just have to scratch a claw. little bit more. I think some of those overseas guys these days. So that that may contribute to it. But I think the point that you made that's really perhaps the general one that applies is maybe it is just a huge leap from college basketball to the NBA. Maybe it's a bigger leap than we realize. I mean, a lot of times we're reminded that there's a huge leap from the G League to the NBA. There's a lot of guys who thrive in the G League. I remember Jim Riffragette who had a lot of

name recognition when he played in college, struggled in the NBA, averaged like 25, 30 points a game in the G League. So maybe the chasm between overseas leagues, NCAA basketball, and the NBA is just a little bit bigger than maybe we give it credit for. Okay, that's probably actually a good transition into the biggest certainty in this draft, which is Cooper Flagg, now a Dallas Maverick. I found this actually really good in ESPN's coverage last night. I didn't know this, but his family has this mantra.

If you're the biggest guy in the gym, find a new gym. So you like that as well? I loved that. Yeah, I loved it. That's what forces him from Maine to Monteverdi Academy to Duke, the implication always being raise your level of competition. Oh, you're great. Well, put yourself against some better players.

Every step of the way that Cooper Flagg has done that, Andy, he has done well. Every time he has put himself into a bigger gym, he has done well. But now it is chasm, this big leap to the NBA, he's now in the biggest gym. I was thinking this when they're talking about it. There's no bigger gym now. He's in the biggest gym that it gets to.

I'm curious. Like, does it translate? I think so. I think he is a relatively safe pick. And I throw that relatively caveat in there just because, like I said, every year I do this, I become more wary of making certain, and proclamations with certainty. However, with him, there isn't a box that he doesn't check, at least to some degree.

And the growth that he had from the start of his season at Duke to the end, I think was notable. By the end, he was clearly an alpha number one type scorer when he didn't really look like that at the start of the year. I think he was a better passer and creator for teammates than people realized. he entered college basketball as sort of a high-profile defender, and I think he defended that classification well. He literally does everything. I think before the season started, it was fair to say Cooper Flagg can maybe develop into like a high-end Andre Carolinko, which to me is very, very high praise, because I think he's one of the most underrated players ever. Now I see him more in like, is he, is he, is he,

like a potential Scotty Pippin, who was a guy that years ago, I ranked as a top 25 to 30 player all time. He has incredible Swiss Army knife potential. And I think one of the most important things with him that everybody needs to remember is he was essentially a high school senior this past season. He reclassified before the 24, 25 campaign. So essentially, this is a high school senior just destroying. NCAA Division I competition and not just D1 competition,

ACC competition. So yeah, it's going to be a big leap from the ACC to the NBA, but his leap isn't going to be as big as a lot of the other guys who were drafted last night. And I think all of that in concert with his competitiveness, which just kind of leaps off the screen when you watch him play and that attitude that's been instilled in him by his parents. And just in case I stepped on your quote earlier,

his mom said, if you're the best guy in the gym, you need to find a new gym. And like you, I just love that. And I think that has guided him to this point. And now that he's in the biggest gym, it's going to be a little bit of a learning curve. Like there will definitely be an adjustment period as there is with everybody. But I think he has a chance to be a very, very special, like, franchise cornerstone level talent. All NBA, top five player in the league level of ceiling? Yeah, I think I would go so far as to say, like, best case scenario for him is maybe even an MVP.

You think back to Scottie Pippen's career in the 90s, and one of those seasons, I think it was the full season that Jordan missed. Pippin finished second or third in MVP voting. And he averaged something like, you know, 20 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, big block and steel numbers. And the game was played at a much slower pace back then. So I could see Cooper Flag, like the maximized version of Cooper Flag in four or five years, putting up that kind of a stat line only with like the the pace, juice, the juiced pace of today's game. I think it could be like a 25 point per game guy who also gives you five or six assists, a bunch of rebounds, good stealing block numbers. Yeah. So to answer your question, all NBA is very much in play. And I would not cap it at that even. We'll be right back on Will Cain Country.

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Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. or wherever you download podcasts. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. Okay, I want to come back to this Scotty Pippen conversation because I'm just going to play devil's advocate with myself by asking you some questions.

How much of your projection into him is the intangibles you talked about? Because when you watch anybody's draft coverage or any of the write-ups on Cooper Flag, like the number one thing they talk about is his competitiveness and that he's a student of the game and that super-coachable wants to learn, doesn't, isn't selfish, wants to make the right basketball play. Okay, I'm going to tell you why I'm asking this in a minute.

And they will do things like who's the best shooter in the draft, who's the best defender in the draft, all these specifics, and he never gets any of them. He doesn't. Now, maybe they did a top five shooter. He'd be in the top five of every category. But he's not number one in all these draft projections on any one particular thing, except for competitiveness.

So how much of all of this you're talking about is on his intangibles? I would say a lot, and to harken back to our earlier conversation, I think that's actually really important because if you're just diving into numbers and film and so-and-so had a 38-inch vertical or whatever it may be, the margins between a lot of these guys are razor-thin, and that I think gets back to the crapshoot discussion that we had earlier. What really separates the special players in the NBA are the guys that just have a ton of internal motivation, have a ton of drive to be better. It's the guys that are going to spend a ton of time in the offseason working on the weaknesses that they have and perfecting the strengths that they have. And I think he's going to check all those boxes. Now, having said that, you can also make a very cold, calculated objective case that he's going to be the best player in this draft. And there's a bunch of different statistical models that people use. Everyone I've seen, and I'm talking dozens, have Cooper Flagg not just number one in this class, but like far and away number one.

And one of my favorite catch-all numbers, and the way I described a catch-all is I think most people are familiar with Wins Above replacement and baseball that try to just take an entire player's entire game and encapsulate it in one number. one of my favorites for basketball is box plus minus just because it's pretty accessible and it goes back pretty far in history and cooper flags freshman box plus minus the only guys who are close are zion williamson and anthony davis who were both phenomenal prospects their NBA careers have have i guess you could say Zion is a disappointment at this point but but again that goes back to the intangible part of it and i think it's fair to one wonder if Zion cares about being great as much as Cooper Flagg seems to. So he's got he's got like the eye test part of it down Cooper Flagg does. And I think the numbers love him too. And it's at this point, I think it's really hard to poke holes in his case as a great player. You bring one up that, you know, maybe he's a Jack of all trades master of none type of a player. That's where I was headed. Yes, that's where I was headed. Like what is he special at that can't be stopped? in the NBA.

And I think that's a fair thing to bring up. But a lot of times when I think of a, when I think of that type of a player, I think of a guy who's like a C plus and everything and maybe a B on, you know, one skill like defense or shooting or whatever. And even those guys can have long and successful careers. I think Cooper Flag is going to be like an A minus in everything or a B plus and everything. And then he's like an A, you know, he's an A plus competitiveness. or he ends up being an A-minus as a shooter.

And if you're that kind of jack-of-all-trades, that's a different conversation than the guy who's just solid at everything. I think Cooper Flagg, even if he can't be exceptional, like best in the league at any one thing, if he's very good at everything, he's going to be a very good player. So this is the devil's advocate that I'm leaning back on. So you've already basically disavowed me of any concerns I might have, but historically I feel like specifically when it comes to projects or projections or prospects

and the NBA draft that the league lends itself towards yo SGA's first step is unstoppable Darren Fox's speed is absolutely incredible Steph Curry's shot is otherworldly you know and it often goes back to something that is athletic that is athletically unstoppable. And in some ways, maybe you could say there was a lot that kept Luca from going number one overall, but you could say maybe that was sort of something with Luca as well. But with Luca, you would say his passing was on the level of Jason Kidd. You could see that stuff where it's like, whoa, it's just harder to see with Cooper.

Like the highlight reels, how about this? The highlight reels of Cooper flag don't read like the highlight reels of other NBA MVPs, except for maybe Yokic. I was just going to say that. Yeah, meaning there's not, the wows aren't your traditional wows. That's not what you get with Cooper Flag. And when you say intangibles, I do feel like the league undervalues intangibles.

It's more about these weapons that these players have, right? Now, you've already disavowed us on the intangibles because you've pointed out, look, Jordan had the intangibles, and you could argue that was actually his best thing, his competitiveness. Right. Same with Kobe. and you made the case for Yokic and Yon, it's on that same front.

You know who else I'd add to that conversation is Dirk? Like, Dirk was a work in progress from moment one, and he put the work in, to your point, every offseason, it was like, I'm targeting this weakness or this strength to be unstoppable or improve this weakness. And so a guy that's willing to do that can fashion himself into a franchise star. We know that. We have the examples.

But it's just, it feels like more the exception than the rule and how teams try to acquire their, their franchise piece. They acquire their franchise piece with an Anthony Edwards type athletic Marvel or a physical freak like Wimbunyama, you know. It's just not too often do you hear we just drafted Scotty Pippin. And even, by the way, we know how high praise that is, but then I think a lot of people hear that and be like, yeah, but Scotty Pippen was a number two. I need a number one in this league.

I don't need a number two with the first overall pick. Yeah, and I think that's a fair reaction to that comparison. I would just harken back to what I said earlier that Scotty Pippen did have a chance to be the main guy on the Bulls in the 90s in an era that had a pretty good amount of talent. And he was a legitimate MVP candidate and the Bulls still won 50 plus games. So because Scottie Pippen, I mean, Scotty Pippen was a number two, but he played with Michael Jordan. Like literally every other player in the history of the league would have been a number two in that situation. And by the time he got away from Jordan, he was too old to be an alpha. Now I'm on a soapbox because I think Scotty Pippin is one of the more underrated players in league history.

So that's one part of it. And then the other thing that I thought about as you were talking and you even brought it up is I think what really differentiated Nicola Yolkich is those intangibles. It's stuff that's really hard to measure. And he's ultra competitive, but he also has great feel for the game. And I think that's true of Cooper Flagg as well. I think he's got great feel for the game. Now, if you had to say, okay, let's stop being, you know, operating in this nebulous area of intangibles,

if you had to give a specialty that said, I think this guy could be special. It's another one that's, you know, not typically used to describe a number one pick. But I think the thing that might be most NBA ready right off the bat is his defensive versatility. And that goes back to the original comp that I said a while ago with Andre Carolenko, a guy who's long can defend a bunch of different positions, can defend in a

bunch of different ways. Like, he can make an impact on defense as the off ball guy. He's great at covering space and being like a weak side shot blocker, getting into passing lanes. And I think one thing that this postseason has taught us is that maybe a lot of teams were undervaluing defense. One of the reasons

the Pacers made it all the way the finals is they had guys like Aaron Nie Smith and Andrew Nemhard who just played extremely hard on

defense. And obviously the Thunder, I mean, they had an incredible number one ranked defense in the regular season and they just

dominated people on that end through the playoffs. So if you had to like hang your hat on a specialty right now, it may be that. It may be his defense.

But what's incredible about him is, like I said, I see point forward potential. I see three-point shooter potential. And so when you add that to a guy who could be a potential all-defense type player, it starts to get pretty interesting to think about his ceiling. Now, one more caveat. I have also been a long-time advocate that offense is more important than defense. And I just think a, you know, a high, high-end creator like a Luca

or a Yikic is really hard to recreate or replace. But if you've got a guy that, you know, checks boxes on both ends of the floor to the degree that Flag does, I think it's a huge deal. Okay, let's nerd out one more moment on Cooper Flag and the Dallas Mavericks. And this can be selfish, but so what? How do you see him fitting with the Mavericks? Like, let me, let's back into that for a moment. Let me ask you a more specific question.

You talk about his defense. So what can he guard? He can guard fours. He can guard threes. Can he guard a five? Can he guard a center? Can he guard a two? I'm not sure you can guard a, you know, and Anthony Edwards. I think it'll be lineup dependent. One of the things about today's NBA is a lot of teams

will play positionless lineups, and I think he could be featured in positionless lineups too. So if you're facing another size five, I would trust him on that. There are certain twos I would trust him against. I think obviously his best spot is like a combo three, four type guy, which you're hitting on. And to get to the beginning, of that question. I think if you're going to have any kind of a knock on Cooper Flag, it's almost an indirect one because if you have some skepticism about his fit in Dallas, at least right now, I do think that's fair because this team is loaded with fours and fives. Their starting point guard is recovering from a torn ACL. And the rotation is just weird right now. And when I hear

Jason Kidd say something like, we think Cooper Flag could play the two, that's a little concerning to me because that may be true. I hate to put a cap on anybody's potential at the start of their career. And if he does develop into a natural too, like he's probably even better than all this praise I'm giving him right now. But to me, he's very clearly like a switchable, versatile point forward type of a guy. I think that's what makes the most sense. And I think it may take two or three years for Dallas to fashion the right kind of roster where he's really comfortable in that spot. And I'm not sure they have the right front office to do that.

I think it's going to be really hard for anybody to trust Niko Harrison to put the right guys around the Cooper flag. I don't want to do the NICO conversation right now. Today's the day. I don't blame you. And here's why, and this is probably me being a homer. I love the fit with the existing roster. Meaning, I see this.

I see Cooper Flag at 3, Anthony Davis at 4, Daniel Gaffer, or Derek Lively at 5. And you go too deep at 5. You've got PJ Washington there as well, and he's a good player. And he probably, I don't know if he wants to come off the bench because it's the final year of his contract. But, you know, he's a 3-4 as well like Cooper Flag. So you're really deep across that front line. And it's really good, to your point earlier, defensively. Like, that's a really good defensive front line.

The problem, as you point out, is going to be the backcourt. no Kyrie Irving, and really not much else to speak of, which suggests maybe the lineup won't be this, what we're talking about. They're going to make some trades. And I don't love that idea because I actually love this depth of this front line. I saw Shams, Tarania, saying that the Mavericks would be looking at Malcolm Brogden, Chris Paul, and I can't remember the first person was, DeAngelo Russell, to potentially fill in while Kyrie's out,

and then you would hope be able to play alongside Kyrie when he's back. Okay. The weakness in this entire project would be not very good defensively at the two, not very good offensively at the two. You get Kyrie back, you're better offensively at the two. I mean, at the one. I'm talking about the one, I'm sorry. And but I'm wondering if all that defense on the back end of Anthony Davis

and Cooper Flagg covers up your problems in the back court defensively. Yeah, I think it would absolutely cover a lot of flaws. And I have been accused over the years probably fairly of being a little too in love with small ball. And maybe it was just a fascination with those Warriors teams that had Draymond playing the five. But I've always thought that Anthony Davis was more of a natural five than a four. I looking at Cooper Flagg now, I think he's more of a natural four than a three. Having said that, size is kind of made a comeback. in recent years. I mean, obviously, a center has won MVP in three of the last five seasons.

Yannis is huge. He won a couple MVP before then. Joel Embed has a recent MVP. Hartnstein and Chet played a lot together in the playoffs. That was a dual big lineup that OKC used. Indiana was pretty big with Siakum and Turner. So one thing that's fascinating to me about the NBA is to watch how it shifts. And, you know, it's very malleable over time. And it was, you you know, small ball was a huge thing, and maybe I'm just clinging to that too much 10 years ago. Now I think size is more important. So to your point, and real quick, Andy, on that, yeah, go ahead. Every sport, every sport in the long run trends towards size.

Small ball are short-term countermeasures to size when size can't keep up athletically. The point is big guys get more and more athletic, more and more skill. That's true. You're going to choose the, you're going to choose the big guy over the small. guy and every one of these mavericks we just named especially the threes and the fours so flag and davis are i mean they're big guys but they're shooting beyond the arc they're they're bringing the ball up the court they're athletic so is derrick lively he doesn't have that shooting they're just incredibly athletic big guys these aren't like plotters we're not talking about you know

bobon marjanovitch here that's a great point and um something that i've talked about in recent years that I think was kind of under-discussed was centers and power forwards may have gotten smaller for a short period of time, but at the same time, point-guard, shooting guards, and small forwards are getting bigger. And now we have centers like Nicola Yochich, who essentially play point guard for their team on offense. I've never heard it put quite the way that you just did. I think it's totally accurate. That now size is really catching up. to the rest of the players in the league because there's just that skill gap is smaller and in a lot of cases non-existent like i said yokech is basically a point guard yonis is basically a point guard on offense

um so maybe dallas is right in line with the trend to to put together a lineup like this um i like to have maybe a little bit more speed and and versatility in a lineup but lively moves super well for a guy his side I think Gafford moves pretty well for a guy his size. So they could be, they could very well be on to something here. And I've said over and over, Cooper Flag is a wildly versatile player. And so if there's, if there's a cornerstone type guy who could make that work, it may be Cooper Flagg. We'll be right back on Will Kane Country.

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discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com. Welcome back to Will Kane Country. Okay, this has been a Dallas Maverickr-Scooper flag podcast for much of it, but not exclusive to here. So the other guy,

in a lot of ways, you said, you know, there's some drafts that are five deep, some that are three or four deep. It almost feels like this one was too deep. I want to hear if you disagree. But the only other player that anybody seems to put any sense of expectation on is Dylan Harper, the new San Antonio Spurs guard out of Rutgers. And he goes to a team, by the way, that is young and exciting with Womenyama and Stefan Castle. So do you share that expectation for Dylan Harper and like his fit in San Antonio?

Yeah, I love his fit there. And to your point, almost every bit of draft research I've done over the last several weeks has Cooper Flagg in his own tier, Dylan Harper in his own tier, and then basically everybody else. And from what I've seen and what I've studied statistically, I think that's probably accurate. It is kind of an interesting fit for Dylan Harper in San Antonio because they traded for Deerrin Fox this past season. I've I'm sure not knowing that they would be in the top three or top two. They have Stefan Castle, who's kind of a combo guard who just won rookie of the year. And so it's kind of crowded in that back court. But Fox has experience with playing with other guys who handle the ball. He did it with Halliburton in Sacramento. He did it with Sabonis in Sacramento. Castle, like I said, is a combo guard, not necessarily a point guard who's going to demand a ton of touches.

And I think all three of those guys, Fox, to the least extent, they're long enough. They're not necessarily tall, but they're long enough in terms of wingspan to maybe play all three of them together as wild as that sounds. And if you've got Victor Wimbunyama on the back line to like, you know, we just talked about covering up defensive mistakes with Dallas. There's no better defensive eraser in the NBA right now than Victor Wembenyama. Maybe Rudy Gobert, but I'm not even sure that comp works in any. more. Wemagnama is just incredibly mobile and long. And so I think you could get away with playing some pretty unique lineups. And the obvious thing to get excited about is just the Harper Wembenyama combination. Those guys are similar age. They're going to grow together in a very stable

organization. And I think that duo has the potential to be very, very good, mostly because Victor Wimbunyama is a once-in-a-generation-type prospect. But I think Harper could be really good, too. We might have just stumbled on a trade here. Spurs, two stacked in the back court, Mavs too stacked in the front court. PJ Washington for Darren Fox? That's interesting. I'm going to have to dive on my trade machine after this and see if I can.

I don't mind that just initially hearing it, yeah. Probably the Spurs say no to that, but. Then what do you do with? We love PJ Washington and Dallas, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, anybody else? There was a couple of shockers, the trade-ups, New Orleans trading up.

I think it was nine spots, eight or nine spots, and giving up an unprotected first in the future to get Derek Queen out of Maryland. So that was kind of a shocking thing to see. But anything else you saw from this draft that you're like, I really love this guy, I really hate this move by this team. I think I think you nailed the biggest shock actually to have an to give up an unprotected 2026 pick for a team that's as volatile as the pelicans was just kind of crazy to me and maybe they're maybe they're just totally sold on Derek Queen and he's going to be great

but that that move shocked me the Hanson Yang pick or Yang Hanson at number 16 he had gotten a little bit of momentum here in the last couple weeks. I heard his name a lot more than I did say a month or two ago. And for those who don't know, he's a jumbo, like seven foot two Chinese center. They're calling him the Chinese Yokic. It's probably not fair to him, but that was just the nickname that he's got. Even with the momentum that he had the last couple of weeks, I think everybody just assumed he was going to be at best like 28, 29, 30. Most people thought he'd be in the second round. So to have the Blazers take him at 16 was a bit of a shocker, especially since they already have a couple centers on their team, including one that was a rookie

last year. So that was interesting. Ace Bailey to the Jazz was interesting to me, too, because they knew he didn't want to go there. So it's a little bit of a gamble. We've seen guys in various sports do this where they put out, they put out the word before the draft. If you take me, I'm not going to be happy. And by all accounts, Ace Bailey did that with basically everybody except for Washington, in Brooklyn, and I can't remember the third one. New Orleans. But they were all outside the top five.

So for Utah to do, that was interesting. On the other side of the coin, I know we just said it was a two-player draft, and I generally believe that. But I actually do, I am intrigued by V.J. Edgecoe, who the Sixers took at number three, really stout, you know, built, stocky, super athletic guy who reminds me physically, and Jay Billis even said this last night, too. And this is purely a physical cop. Reminds me of Dwayne Wade. Like, there's, there's obviously no guarantee he's going to hit the heights that Wade did on the floor, but he just kind of looks physically like he did. So he's intriguing to me.

Okay, I want to ask you one more thing about Cooper Flag, but here's two players I want to ask about. So what about Colin Murray Boyles, who, when he got drafted by the Raptor, stood up and said, F. Talk about not wanting to be somewhere. Did you see that? Is he unhappy to go to Camdenman? And I actually didn't even see that. There were multiple, I'm going to have to go back and watch that now. There were multiple reactions that I just found kind of fascinating last night. Ace Bailey was one. He did not hide his disdain for that pick, especially after he got off the stage.

I was doing an article this, or working an article this morning and look at images on Getty and everything that pulled up for Ace Bailey. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost. and maybe that's just the shock of getting drafted, but he did not look pleased. The other one that was fascinating to me was, and this probably isn't fair to picking him this way, but I was kind of confused by Danny Wolfe

as how upset he was to be going at the end of the first round and I kind of expected him to be there. In terms of the fit with Colin Murray Boyles in Toronto, I think it's probably fine. Their team confused. me even before the draft. Colin Murray Boyles is a guy that I think could be really good defensively. He's got some versatility. And so maybe he can fill in a lot of gaps. But it's like half their roster is gap fillers at this point. Scotty Barnes is a gap filler to me. Brandon Ingram is

a guy that creates gaps on his own games. So their whole, their whole situation is kind of odd to me. I don't think he's going to come right in and fix it right away. But I also, I also don't think, spots that it sounds like he gave. We'll be right back on Will Cain Country. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me. Kennedy, make sure to check out my podcast. Kennedy saves the world.

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All right. Last positive, though, con canipple from Duke. This is actually, to me, the anti-Cupert flag pick. That doesn't mean he's not a well-rounded player and can't do some things, but he has one thing that is clear. He can shoot. He can shoot. He can shoot.

He can shoot three. That's always exciting. Also, by the way, I love the coverage of him and his family. What does he got? Four brothers. There's like five of them. I thought that was awesome. All their names start with K.

I mean, we're going to see Knapples here in the NBA and NBA draft, at least according to last night, for years to come. He gets picked forth by Charlotte. Does that a guy like that excite you? Like, I don't know. It's just something I can hang my hat on. Okay, put this guy in the lineup, and we got a guy that's going to shoot 40, 45% on threes.

Yeah, I think those type of players are always going to have a spot in the NBA. especially the current modern NBA. I'd have to look this up, but I think the most recent three point attempt rate in the league was like 40%. So meaning 40% of shots that were taken in the NBA last season were threes. You need guys who take threes, take a lot of threes, and I think he's, and hit them at a high rate, and I think he's going to check those boxes.

I think he has a chance to be a very, very good shooter. And the thing about him that's maybe different than some of the other three-point shooting specialists who've popped over the last few years like names that come to mind for me are guys like uh and here comes a parade of white guys um joe harris duncan robinson um kyle corver if you want to go a little bit further back in time um i'll throw michael porter junior in there just to to mix it up a little bit um a lot of those guys really are just specialists. They're great at moving off the ball. They're great at shooting off the catch. And that alone makes them very, very valuable. I think Knappel has a chance to do that and then

some. His athletic testing numbers at the Combine were better than people expected. I think he competes on the defensive end, even if he's not going to be like a defensive stopper or anything. I think he can create off the bounce a little bit, both for himself and others. So I think there's a chance for him to be a very well-rounded player, too. You definitely hang your hat, like you said, on the shooting. But I think there's maybe a little bit more upside than we thought with him maybe two months ago. But, you know, obviously Charlotte believes that, or they wouldn't have taken him in the top four. Okay, last thing here with Andy Bailey. You mentioned you think he's one of the best prospects in quite some time, Cooper Flagg. You also mentioned that Victor Wimbunyama is a once-in-a-generation

level of prospect. The athletic did this. I found this fascinating. And they ranked the top 20 prospects coming out of the NBA draft going back, I believe, at least 20 years. And the criteria here is not who they ended up being, but who we thought they were coming out. Like how much of a camp miss guy were you? How big of a franchise cornerstone prospect were you? And it's interesting to put Cooper Flag in that context. And that's going to bring you to names. I mean, obviously, I think that the athletic ranked them 30 deep. And, like, for example, Luca Donchich would have been lower because you don't go number four unless your prospect status was much higher, right? But you're going to have names in there, like you mentioned, Anthony Davis, Zion Williamson, Victor Wimbunyama.

Kyrie was probably in this as well. Like, if you're looking at – and not who Kyrie became, but we're talking about who he was coming out. out. That's, if you could rewind the clock to all these guys and you're sitting there on draft night, right? And you don't get the benefit of, of hindsight and foresight knowing what's going to happen. What, uh, what do you think Cooper Flagg ranks? It's almost like asking if we had a draft and they were all the same age with all the same resume right now. Where would flag have come in on that? I think that's a great exercise and I think you framed it the right way because it is kind of hard to try to remove from your mind what so-and-so became.

Like, you know, you think about somebody like Zion, who just has not been able to stay on the floor, has not been able to stay in great shape. But if you can remember your frame of mind at the time they were drafted, I honestly, and I know that he went number three in the draft that he was taken, And I've never been as confident in a prospect being a great, great player as I was in Luke Kudajic. I spent so much time watching his international games.

And when I would hear people talk about how he hadn't proven it against, like, college programs, I remember thinking I was Mugatu taking crazy pills or something. Like, I just didn't get it. I mean, he was the league that he was playing in is the second best. in the world and he was dominating these guys and he was such a such a you mentioned it earlier he was an incredible passer you could see that right off the bat and so for my own personal frame of mind i honestly think he was probably number one for me um number two was probably wemby and he was one where the hype was so high that i i had to fight like my contrarian nature

because i kept i kept hearing that oh he's going to be the best player on both ends of the floor with in three years and thinking like, gosh, why are we putting this much pressure on this guy? But I still thought he was going to be phenomenal. His combination of size and skill is obviously unprecedented. And he's proving some of those projections right already. So I probably would have him two. I was super high on Zion, probably have him three. And just so the viewers or listeners know, I'm just thinking of the last 10 years.

So I think I have, what do I have three right now? I think I would go flag right after that. Now I'm going to take off the blinders that we put on ourselves and allow myself to think about what happened to these guys in the NBA. I don't think flag is going to be susceptible to what, I don't want to say the downfall, what caused the downfall of Zion, but he certainly hasn't lived up to expectations to this point. um i'm i'm not worried that a lot of that stuff is going to cause problems for cooper flag and so

i i could see years from now him being um i i very could very easily see him living up to the hype what i'm trying to say so i'm going to i'm going to recap now though i got wemby first lucca first wendy second zion third flagged fourth i love ben simmons another guy that you really have to ignore what happened to him in the NBA to have him that high. I really liked Kate Cunningham, Palo, Anthony Edwards, and Mowbly. I went, looks like nine deep. But yeah, I think all of those guys at the time of the draft had, they looked like sure fire. Can't miss guys to me. Incredible. Great list. Andy Bailey, Bleach Report. Check out his work where he's writing about the draft and the NBA in general. You can check him out anytime. Always love

having him here on Wilcane Country. Thank you, Andy. Thanks for having me, Will. Always love being on. That's going to do it for us today. We appreciate you listening to the Cane On Sports Edition of Will Cain Country. We hope you will subscribe at Apple or on Spotify, and I will see you again next time. Listen to Ad Free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcast,

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