Jason Timpf Breaks Down the NBA Rookie of the Year Race: Cooper Flagg vs. Kon Knueppel

Welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume.

Happy Monday, everybody. Hope all of you guys had an incredible weekend.

Alright, let’s talk some basketball.

Cooper Flagg Should be NBA Rookie of the Year

Cooper Flagg is the Rookie of the Year.

Right now, Cooper is the betting favorite at -200, and Kon Knueppel is trailing him just slightly at +150.

Two nights after hanging 51 points on the Orlando Magic, Cooper hung 45 on the Lakers last night. And he did the majority of this work in these two games with legitimate on-ball creation—ISOs and ball screens. Of the 96 points he scored in the two games, 52 of them came directly out of pick-and-rolls on the ball or out of ISOs.

Against Orlando, it was a lot of really high-level jump shots off the dribble. Twenty-five of his 51 points came on pull-up jump shots in that game.

Then against the Lakers, it was just downhill attack after downhill attack—getting into the paint for layups, short floaters, and getting to the line a ton. It was just a totally different type of dominant scoring performance against the Lakers.

The Case for Kon Knueppel for NBA Rookie of the Year

I understand some of the buzz for Knueppel. He’s an incredible player in his own right. His skill set is a little more refined at this point, which is why he’s contributing in a winning context in a smaller role.

But I really think the ability to create for yourself is what goes a long way in this discussion for me.

Knueppel is very much an off-ball scorer at this point in his career. Now, he has shown some on-ball chops. He has run some effective ball screens this year in lower volume.

I think he’ll be a solid on-ball player in the long run, but right now, Kon is at his best as a chaos agent off of LaMelo Ball. And that pretty clearly shows in the numbers.

When LaMelo Ball and Knueppel are on the floor together, they’re murdering teams. They have a 127 offensive rating, and they’re outscoring teams by 12 points per 100 possessions.

But when LaMelo is off the floor and Kon Knueppel is on the floor, in 2,172 possessions, so a large sample, about a little less than half of those minutes, the Hornets have a zero net rating, and they only score 112.8 points per 100 possessions. So it’s very clear that Kon is benefiting from playing alongside an offensive engine as a chaos agent.

Not to diminish his impact, I just think it’s a very, very different role than what Cooper Flagg has been doing.

Final Verdict: Why Cooper Flagg Is the Best Rookie in the NBA

Cooper has been playing with substantially less talent, drawing the best opposing defender every single night. He’s at the top of the defensive game plan.

Dallas is the third-worst spot-up efficiency team in the NBA. Charlotte is third-best, for some comparison. Obviously, Kon is a big part of that, but as a team, they’re just a way better jump-shooting group. So it’s not like Dallas is able to create real space for Cooper to operate with his on-ball stuff.

I think zooming in on things like efficiency or how well the teams are playing is a little disingenuous. If we just dropped Knueppel into Dallas this year and asked him to run a thousand on-ball actions the way that Cooper has, I don’t think the Mavs are suddenly a playoff team, and I do think Knueppel’s efficiency takes a pretty big hit.

Knueppel has had a hell of a season. Charlotte has hit a home run. I’m a huge fan of him as a player.

But Cooper Flagg is the best rookie that I’ve watched this year.