{"id":133420,"date":"2025-06-29T06:37:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T06:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/133420\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T06:37:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T06:37:12","slug":"cooper-flagg-side-eyes-nico-harrison-after-mention-of-luka-doncic-at-intro-press-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/133420\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg side-eyes Nico Harrison after mention of Luka Doncic at intro press conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cooper Flagg<\/a> couldn\u2019t make it through his introductory press conference<\/a> with the Dallas Mavericks without Luka Doncic<\/a>\u2018s name getting brought up. The two will forever be linked to each other after general manager Nico Harrison stunned the NBA<\/a> world by trading Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 2.<\/p>\n

But the focus was to be on Flagg \u2014 the No. 1 overall selection in Wednesday\u2019s NBA Draft<\/a> \u2014 on Friday. That is, until a question came up about Flagg becoming the next face of the franchise, following in the footsteps of Doncic and before him, Dirk Nowitzki<\/a>. Immediately after hearing Doncic\u2019s name in the question, Flagg appeared to give the side-eye to Harrison before answering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m coming in just trying to learn and try to get better every single day,\u201d Flagg said, via TMZ Sports<\/a>. \u201cI think if I can do that to the best of my ability, I think expectations and pressures that other people will put on me and our team will kind of work itself out. I\u2019m just trying to come in and be the best that I can be and just win at the highest level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper Flagg facing high NBA expectations after productive season at Duke<\/p>\n

Harrison has taken as many bullets as possible from the Mavericks fanbase since trading Doncic for a package headlined by All-Star forward Anthony Davis<\/a>. You would think some of that would have subsided after Dallas won the NBA Draft Lottery despite having just a 1.8% chance of winning it. And yet, fans chanted \u201cFire Nico\u201d at the team\u2019s draft watch party at the American Airlines Center. Whether fair or not, Flagg will be compared to Doncic throughout his NBA career. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t look at anything as pressure,\u201d\u00a0Flagg previously said of following Doncic. \u201cI think me going into whatever situation I go into, I\u2019m just going to try to be myself all the time and I\u2019m going push myself to be better and better every single day and make the most out of every day. I\u2019m not worried about living up to certain players\u2019 expectations or things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flagg won the Wooden Award, along with being a Consensus All-American, ACC Player of the Year, and making the All-NCAA Tournament team in his lone season at Duke<\/a>. He averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 37 games. Flagg shot just over 48% from the field and 38.5% from three.<\/p>\n

Flagg, Davis and Kyrie Irving<\/a> make up the newest big three in Dallas. Certainly, not a bad situation for a No. 1 pick with high expectations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg couldn\u2019t make it through his introductory press conference with the Dallas Mavericks without Luka Doncic\u2018s name…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,1454,686,149,4057,26392,166,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-133420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cooper-flagg-24-montverde-academy","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-dallasmavericks","13":"tag-luka-doncic-17-slovenia","14":"tag-mavericks","15":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114765276418042176","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}