Cooper Flagg hasn’t had the best of starts to his rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavericks have had Flagg, the No. 1 pick of the 2025 NBA Draft, play at point guard, and Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green isn’t sure that is the right decision. Green spoke about the Mavericks giving that responsibility to Flagg on The Draymond Green Show.
“It’s hard to play in this league when you don’t have a point guard,” Green said. “They’re trying Cooper at point guard, which I understand. You’re allowing him to play with the ball in his hands. He won’t ultimately be a point guard, but you may believe that that can help his development.”
Green thinks, however, that Flagg doesn’t yet understand how Klay Thompson can help him and is unsure about how to get Anthony Davis involved in the offense. These are growing pains for a rookie, but the four-time NBA champion wonders if the Mavericks are making the same mistake the Philadelphia 76ers made with Ben Simmons.
“I think Cooper Flagg’s going to be incredible,” Green stated. “We’re asking a rookie who’s not a point guard to be a great point guard. And that’s just not how this works. And so, you just got to be careful. It’s not his real position.
“You ask yourself the question,” Green added. “If Ben Simmons was allowed to be a power forward that can handle the ball the way he handled the ball, does his career turn out differently than making him a point guard? The last thing you want is him to lose his confidence trying to play point guard because once you lose your confidence in this league, it’s nearly impossible to get it back.”
To be fair to the 76ers, Simmons did thrive as a point guard in his early years in the NBA. He won Rookie of the Year and was an All-Star in each of the three seasons after that.
Simmons also made an All-NBA team during that time, and no one was saying the 76ers should consider playing him at the power forward spot. What many were saying, though, was that he needed to develop a reliable jump shot.
Simmons couldn’t even shoot well from the mid-range, let alone from three. He was a poor free-throw shooter as well, and his shooting struggles would end up contributing to his downfall.
The beginning of the end of the Simmons we knew came in the 2021 playoffs. Both the Washington Wizards and the Atlanta Hawks intentionally fouled him at various points, and his confidence seemed to go down with each instance.
Simmons would take just 14 shots over the last three games against the Hawks, as he didn’t want to go to the line. The clearest example of his fear came in Game 7 when he infamously passed up a wide-open dunk that would have tied the game in the closing stages.
The 76ers would eventually lose, and Simmons was never the same after that. His confidence was gone, and as Green stated, it’s nearly impossible to get it back.
A series of back injuries didn’t help matters either, and Simmons is now out of the league. He averaged just 5.0 points, 4.7 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game for the Brooklyn Nets and the Los Angeles Clippers in 2024-25, his final NBA season as of now.
You doubt things ever get that bad for Flagg, but this point guard experiment hasn’t worked well so far. The 18-year-old is averaging 13.9 points, 6.6 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.2 steals, and 0.6 blocks per game while shooting 40.3% from the field and 27.0% from beyond the arc.
Flagg, though, isn’t concerned by his play and says no one else should be either. He thinks he’ll be fine over time, and Kyrie Irving’s return from a torn ACL should help. Head coach Jason Kidd hopes Irving can return in 2025, and it will be interesting to see how Flagg performs when the star guard is up to speed.
