The Flagg-Knueppel Debate
It’s fun but pointless
There’s an interesting debate going on about Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel. In a nutshell: is Knueppel seriously underrated and perhaps better than Flagg.
Well, maybe, maybe not. More to the point: who cares?
The main thing is that they complement each other. And after three outings, we get a much better idea of how that works.
Knueppel, overall, is much more oriented towards scoring and he’s really good at it. In particular, he’s good at three point shooting. But you also are starting to get intimations that he doesn't mind driving, which is also good because in about a week, guys are going to be all up in his grill. No one wants to get burned by a guy who shoots like that (stray thought: reportedly he was considering Virginia. That worked out well for him).
Flagg is not necessarily going to score like Knueppel, but his impact on the game is pretty remarkable and what’s extremely cool is that his focus appears to be on one thing: winning.
One of the best plays in the win over Maine was seeing Flagg dive for a ball when the game was long decided. Not everyone would do that in what was essentially garbage time.
What you’re going to see from Flagg is more nuanced. He’ll get a rebound where it’s needed. He’ll pass the ball to a guy who can get the ball to someone in scoring position. He’ll make someone think twice about driving. He’ll alter shots.
He’s 6-9, he can run and he’ll defend hard. A lot of what he does is going to go under the radar.
We’re not comparing him to Bill Russell by any means, but there is a play from his San Francisco days when he was chasing down a fast break and made a very small adjustment that allowed him to alter his path. He said only teammate KC Jones, who was later a Celtics teammate as well, understood what he did.
Flagg is a fascinating talent and he too is going to do things that most of us won’t fully recognize.
The main thing about the two of them though is that they play well together and they seem to. And that brings up another interesting parallel: great Duke teammates with great chemistry.
The first set was Art Heyman and Jeff Mullins. The second was Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard. The third was arguably Jason Williams and Chris Duhon. One of our favorite stories from the 2001 championship team was that Williams told Duhon that one of his dreams was to throw the ball up after winning the title. Duhon remembered and gave him that moment.
All of those teammates did something special: they made each other better. If Flagg and Knueppel can do that, neither is going to care about the who’s better stuff because they’ll help to make Duke a truly imposing team.