{"id":607338,"date":"2026-02-17T02:11:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/607338\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T02:11:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:11:18","slug":"barack-obama-praises-cooper-flaggs-play-for-dallas-mavericks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/607338\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama praises Cooper Flagg&#8217;s play for Dallas Mavericks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Feb. 16, 2026, 3:29 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p>Former President Barack Obama praised several young NBA players during the All-Star Weekend.Obama specifically mentioned Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg, noting his poise at a young age.Obama made these comments while discussing the high level of performance from today&#8217;s young athletes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Cooper Flagg has earned the respect and fandom of many people worldwide due to his award-winning season at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/ncaab\/teams\/duke-blue-devils\/1388\/\" data-autotag=\"d9e0b712-2f57-4d7c-998e-25a7ac4fbc0d\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Duke<\/a> and the first part of his rookie season with the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sportsdata.usatoday.com\/basketball\/nba\/teams\/dallas-mavericks\/6\/\" data-autotag=\"e6751d65-4a81-4131-973c-176d23467b30\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\">Dallas Mavericks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">He might have just found his best yet: Barack Obama.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The former President of the United States was in Los Angeles for the NBA All-Star Weekend, including sitting courtside during Sunday\u2019s games, once catching a loose ball that went out of bounds. While being interviewed by reporters, Obama gave reasons the NBA should reduce the regular-season from 82 to 72 games and noted that Flagg, who was supposed to play in the Rising Stars game, was out due to an injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Still, Obama has been impressed by what the former Duke star has accomplished at such a young age.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">\u201cYou look at these younger kids who are coming in, they have so much poise and experience, somebody like Cooper Flagg,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/articles\/barack-obama-urges-nba-owners-125500618.html\" data-t-l=\":b|z|k|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Obama said<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019s a baby. You can tell the guy\u2019s barely shaven. And he\u2019s out there doing what he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Need a news break? <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-t-l=\":body nav (play)|e|auto spike click:5|\u2691u\" class=\"gnt_ar_b_sp_a\" href=\"https:\/\/play.usatoday.com\/?itm_source=SPIKE&amp;itm_campaign=PLAYSPIKE&amp;itm_medium=ONSITE\">Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Another former Duke star, Kon Knueppel, also earned praise.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">\u201c[Kon] Knueppel? Unbelievable,\u201d Obama said. \u201c[VJ] Edgecombe. So you\u2019ve got these young folks who are now performing at levels that I think we\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb. 16, 2026, 3:29 p.m. ET Former President Barack Obama praised several young NBA players during the All-Star&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[72400,7,686,149,4057,166,6,74643,73480,75215,72404,72912,72598,72464,73149,80711,72459,72444,72422,72405,73111,72406,72558,72403],"class_list":{"0":"post-607338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-dallasmavericks","13":"tag-mavericks","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sstssportscollegedukemens-basketball","16":"tag-sstsnmens-basketball","17":"tag-tagbarack-obama","18":"tag-tagbasketball","19":"tag-tagcelebrities-entertainment-news","20":"tag-tagcooper-flagg","21":"tag-tagdallas-mavericks","22":"tag-tagduke-blue-devils-mens-basketball","23":"tag-tagexecutive-branch","24":"tag-taglocal-affiliate-arts-entertainment","25":"tag-tagnational-sports","26":"tag-tagnba","27":"tag-tagoverall-positive","28":"tag-tagpolitics","29":"tag-tagsports-news","30":"tag-tagstory-highlights-ai-enabled","31":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607338","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=607338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}