Sports

Cooper Flagg’s Revelation Of His ‘Favorite Player Growing Up’ Has Left Everyone Feeling Incredibly Old

#Cooper Flagg
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As the entire basketball world expected, Duke Blue Devils standout Cooper Flagg was taken #1 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft by the Dallas Mavericks. Flagg is just 18-years-old, having been born in the year 2006.

By 2006, LeBron James had already been in the league for three years. Steve Nash was the MVP. Kevin Durant was still playing at Texas.

By the time Cooper Flagg was 10-years-old in 2016, LeBron was leading the Cleveland Cavaliers to a historic comeback from 3-1 down in the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors. That was also Jayson Tatum’s first season at Duke.

As such, when Flagg was a teenager honing his craft as a basketball player, Jayson Tatum was one of the NBA’s most promising rising stars and subsequently became Flagg’s favorite player, which is a fact that has the entire NBA world feeling quite old.

Unfortunately for Flagg, he won’t get to face off against Tatum during his rookie season as the Boston Celtics star is expected to miss the entirety of the 2025/26 season as he recovers from a torn Achilles.

Flagg’s rookie contract with the Dallas Mavericks pays him $62.7M and takes him through the 2028 season. If he stays with the team and lives up to his expectations, he could be offered a $359 million supermax contract in 2029 and a $509 million supermax contract in 2034.

By the time he turns 31 years old, he could potentially have $930 million in career earnings from NBA contracts alone, which doesn’t even account for sneaker deals and other endorsements.

Flagg will certainly be facing a fair bit of pressure in Dallas as fans will look to him to fill the void left by the franchise’s confounding decision to trade superstar Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers.