Jay Williams projects Cooper Flagg as prospect post-draft lottery

Duke’s Cooper Flagg could to be the next great player in the league as the top overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. Jay Williams just doesn’t know, though, if he’ll be that right away during his rookie season in the NBA.

‘Get Up’ debated the chances that the Dallas Mavericks could trade the No. 1 pick on Monday, which led Mike Greenberg to ask Williams what the projection is for Flagg specifically over the first three or so years for him in the association. He feels like he’ll eventually get to the level of an All-Star within his first half decade but isn’t sure he’ll be that immediately considering how he plays the game in being good at everything rather than being elite in one specific aspect.

“I think, in five years, he can be an All-Star, I think potentially trend towards an All-Star,” said Williams. “Look, I don’t know if he’s great at one thing. I think he’s really exceptional at a variety of things. He’s a stat-filler, right.”

That might be underselling the ceiling, at least early on, of Flagg. Still, it could be a fair evaluation of his game as, when looking at the stat line from his freshman year in Durham, he’s solid across the board at 19.2 points (48.1% FG, 38.5% 3PT on 1.4 makes), 7.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.4 blocks, and 1.4 steals. Doing all that in a frame at 6’8″ and 220 makes him a very versatile prospect coming into the NBA.

Even so, it’s for that reason that Williams continued his point from earlier in the show that the Mavericks should consider trading the No. 1 pick to let another team select Flagg. He’s just unsure if he’ll be able to reach the top-end of what he could be early on as a pro with the role he’d be playing in Dallas compared to elsewhere.

“He would be a great role player on this team. The only thing I’m worried about, though, is if you condition his brain to be a role player, can he bust out of that rather than conditioning him and his skillset to turn into a star to see if he can reach his peak? And that comes with a different environment than Dallas,” Williams argued.

Flagg is going to at least be productive as a professional based on what he did at the college level. Still, the way the lottery went may not let him be the best he could be early in his career in Williams’ opinion.