{"id":698021,"date":"2026-04-04T16:20:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/698021\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T16:20:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T16:20:28","slug":"mavericks-cooper-flagg-makes-case-for-nba-rookie-of-the-year-with-historic-51-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/698021\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks&#8217; Cooper Flagg Makes Case for NBA Rookie of the Year With Historic 51 Points"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nba\/mavericks\/onsi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dallas Mavericks<\/a> rookie Cooper Flagg had a game for the ages on Friday night against the Orlando Magic, putting up 51 points, 24 of them coming in the fourth quarter. He was efficient from the floor and from three, was still productive on defense, and completely controlled the game. <\/p>\n<p>It may have come in a losing effort, but having the most points in a game by a teenager in NBA history, and being one of just 10 rookies ever with a 50-point game, is one heck of a statement to make in the middle of a Rookie of the Year race. <\/p>\n<p>NBA.com&#8217;s Rookie Ladder still has Flagg second behind Kon Knueppel, as did ESPN&#8217;s latest straw poll, and while those were before this game, Flagg is going to make it as competitive a race as he can. He sounded off on the race after the game. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is what it is. For me, like I\u2019ve said before, it\u2019s just about getting better every single day. I know what I\u2019m capable of, and what I can do. So for me, it\u2019s always been about just improving every night, going out there, competing, being the player that I know I can be, and I\u2019ll let all of the rest of the stuff figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure [if it helps the Rookie of the Year argument]. I would hope it would help, but like I said, I\u2019m not gonna worry about that, worry about just getting better every single night and trying to look at a big picture and start building toward something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg had a game for the ages on Friday night against the Orlando Magic,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-698021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-mavericks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116347353839015899","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698021","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=698021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}