Game 14 Dirkie Thread: Cooper Flagg!...in a landslide...

[KillerLeft]

And Kidd is not hiding him on the bench...not afraid to play him.  Cooper and P.J. have been playing some big minutes.  Not ideal, but we'll see what happens in future games.

This is true. I don't think Kidd really has the option of hiding Flagg on the bench, to be clear, but I do think he should be commended for his treatment of the kid to this point. I think it was probably a mistake (from the team's perspective) to try him at PG right out of the gate in his rookie season, for all the reasons we've talked to death. But, to his credit, Kidd has backed off of that pretty quickly - so quickly that I'm wondering whether or not it was even his idea to begin with, frankly, though we'll never know for sure. And, he's starting to give him the ball in a good way during high leverage moments with Flagg delivering, for the most part. This is probably farther along now because of the forced PG experiment then, at least a little. 

There have been a lot of grumblings in the game threads about how Flagg isn't getting the ball enough, not being used right, etc, and some seem to be blaming Flagg, himself, for being too passive. I think it's interesting that since they moved him to a more natural position his usage rate has been trending UPWARDS, despite playing way less PG. That's a sign that they're slowly zeroing in on the best way to integrate him into the offense to me. I think he's going to look better and better as we move through this season.