Top Pick Cooper Flagg Wins NBA's Rookie of the Year Award

The 2025-26 NBA season offered one of the best Rookie of the Year races ever seen, with Mavericks' forward Cooper Flagg and Hornets' wing battling through the entirety of the 82-game season.

Ultimately, the top pick in Flagg won out, with his star ascension and late scoring spurt offering enough to slip by Knueppel in the final months.

Dallas Mavericks' Cooper Flagg has won the 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year award.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) April 27, 2026

Both Flagg and Knueppel had strong cases for bringing home the hardware, with the Rookie of the Year race being far-and-away the closest of all the major awards.

Flagg, the top pick in the draft, immediately became the most important part of the Dallas Mavericks. At 6-foot-9, his two-way prowess was highly coveted at the draft, with landing No. 1 as the only way to get him.

Across 70 games, Flagg more than lived up to expectations, averaging 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 1.2 steals and 0.9 blocks per game. He saw a shakier start due to positional questions on Dallas’s end, with him carrying the bulk of the handling as a newbie, but quickly leveled out and became a star.

He shot 47% from the field and 30% from three, with the Mavericks winning just 26 games on the season, largely due to injury. Still, he functioned as one of the best two-way rookies we’ve seen in some time, capping off his season averaging 29.2 points in his last six games, one of which he scored 51 in.

Knueppel’s case was equally strong. Flagg’s former Duke teammate and roommate got off to a blistering start with the Hornets after being picked fourth.

He averaged 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 0.7 steals, looking less sparkling from a statistical perspective, but with a few other claims to the award in his back pocket. Knueppel was among the most blistering 3-point shooters ever for a rookie, setting the all-time record with 273 made at a 43% clip.

Knueppel not only led newbies in 3-pointers made, but led the league as a whole, narrowly beating out his own teammate in LaMelo ball by one. Most importantly, he helped the Hornets to surge in the East, playing as one of the best teams in the league since the turn of the year.

Regardless of the winner, both Knueppel and Flagg will enter Year 2 and some of the more exciting young players in the league, both offering bright futures for their respective teams.

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