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

[DanSchwartzgan]

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. 
 

My pet theory (no proof obviously) is Kidd set the team up to fail in the early going to get Nico on out of here.  The extension made Kidd fairly bullet proof and if the ownership wasn't going to pull the plug, Kidd needed to give a push.  It didn't really take much lineup finagling to send this thing down hill.  Williams being out made it even easier and Kidd has a history of early season lineup experimenting.  Add in the fact he had talked cryptically all summer about some version of Point Flagg and he has plausible deniability.  Once things started rolling down hill, the fans did the rest.  Kidd seems to be as big a beneficiary as anyone from Nico's departure.  Again, just a theory.

Back to Flagg, the thing that has helped him as much as anything is Davis being out.  No way he gets those late game touches he's had the last two games if Davis is available.  Flagg tends to defer a bit as it is, but you could really see him deferring to Davis when they played together.  Davis also kills the pace that Flagg generates when he's playing with other guys who can run.  

I wasn't sure it would go this way, but in a very small sample size, I think Davis hurts Flagg's development.  Its part of the Davis conundrum I've talked about.  Davis has to play to build value, but Davis playing probably hurts the (alleged) tank (I still don't know that we have enough info either way at this point).  Davis also hurts Cooper's development.  But, if you don't play him enough before dealing him, you are trashing an asset that could be incredibly helpful in turning this thing around.