{"id":842158,"date":"2026-09-23T19:39:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T19:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/842158\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T19:39:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T19:39:19","slug":"nba-top-100-see-where-espn-ranks-cooper-flagg-kyrie-irving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/842158\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA top 100: See where ESPN ranks Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/mavericks\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">The Dallas Mavericks<\/a> missed the playoffs last season, but with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/kyrie-irving\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Kyrie Irving<\/a> back from his ACL injury and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/topic\/cooper-flagg\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Cooper Flagg<\/a> entering his sophomore season, there&#8217;s plenty to look forward to when the Mavs meet the Rockets on Oct. 21 for the season opener.<\/p>\n<p>How did Irving and Flagg stack up amongst the league&#8217;s top 100 players? ESPN started evaluating that Tuesday in its annual countdown.<\/p>\n<p>Coming in at No. 39 is Irving, who was unranked ahead of the 2025-26 season after tearing his ACL late in the 2024-25 season. Irving was ranked No. 25 before his injury, and is expected to improve the Dallas offense this season. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/mavericks\/2026\/02\/18\/kyrie-irving-shut-down-dallas-mavericks-cooper-flagg\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">At the time of his injury<\/a> in March 2025, Irving was averaging 24.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.6 assists.<\/p>\n<p>The next Maverick on the list jumped nearly 20 spots from last year. Flagg went\u00a0from No. 52 in 2025 to No. 23 ahead of his second season in the NBA.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/mavericks\/article\/cooper-flagg-rookie-year-award-primed-icon-22232669.php\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">2025-26 Rookie of the Year<\/a> averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 1.2 steals per game, leading the Mavs in each category.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks missed the playoffs last season, but with Kyrie Irving back from his ACL injury and\u00a0Cooper&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[7,6560,6,310,475,179,3966,3965,312,90942,87093],"class_list":["post-842158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-basketball","tag-brief","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-oklahomacity","tag-oklahomacitythunder","tag-thunder","tag-tp-kyrie-irving","tag-tp-cooper-flagg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117322053268668002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842158","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=842158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}