10-25-2025, 02:44 PM
(10-25-2025, 01:02 PM)hakeemfaan Wrote: Flagg is a totally different player. Luka is an offensive savant. Flagg's celiing is between a better version of an Andrew Wiggins to maybe a Grant Hill or Scottie Pippen. A player like him will ironically be more valuable when you put him next to a pure scorer. I'm not even saying a Luka, but even a Harden type and then you'll see Flagg's importance.
So that type of a player will have less of an immediate impact on a team where you don't have a PG or a SG who can create. He's not a Harper or a VJ or even a Fears or a Tre Johnson who can come in, have the ball in their hands, and can go to work. We all knew this when he was drafted, but we all knew that he was a taller and better two way player than all of those guys as well, and the hope is that 2 way strength will be easier to build a team around than constantly having to compensate for a weak defensive star.
On top of all this, he is stuck with a coach who never had any refined offensive game plan to begin with. His best plans were to put the ball in Luka or Brunson's hands and ask them to go to work. So you are stuck with that, having to learn a position that you never played before while doing that at the highest level where no one is going to have mercy on you, with no PG and no SG who can create. Yet he has found moments to impress and not look totally lost.
Why so hard on Flagg?
I never expected Flagg to be Luka. My Luka comparison was more about the readiness to be in the league. I also don't think I'm being hard on him. It's not his choice to play PG, but a coaching decision. I'm not saying Flagg can never develop into that, but I really don't think he should be playing that right now. It's throwing his game off on the offensive end, not to mention the rest of the team. It's just too easy for a defender to get into him and he has to focus more on his ball handling than running sets which wastes clock. That also puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the team to try and create something later in the possession and makes it harder for Flagg to get the ball back. And yeah, I do think he's looked lost at times on offense just as many times as he's flashed. That's understandable and he'll learn. He's just really, really, really young.
And that's just the offensive end where I never expected a major impact, but I did expect that he'd show more on the other end and the same is true of a collective unit of AD, DLive and Flagg. Wemby clowning on us is one thing, but the Wizards put it on us for three quarters and made Bagley look like an NBA player. Shout out to George, he's going to be something special.
I don't think I'm being hard on Flagg at all. I didn't have sky high expectations of him and he's underwhelmed those, but I think a big chunk of that is the position his coaches have put him in and some of the rest of the roster (I must have done something horrible in another life as the basketball gods have seen fit to put D'Lo on the team that I watch(not to mention extending Kidd and trading away one of the greatest basketball minds of this generation)).