YouTube Gold: What Else Could It Be?
Cooper Flagg’s dunk against Pitt was instantly iconic.
Cooper Flagg’s astonishing dunk from the Pitt game is even more amazing upon closer inspection.
At the beginning of the play, he’s guarding 6-10 Cam Corhen. As Corhen rolls to the basket ready for a pass from Guillermo Diaz Graham, Flagg initially looks at 6-3 Jaland Lowe, who rolls out to the three point line to catch the ball. But Flagg, after considering Lowe, moves in place to guard Corhen closer to the basket. Diaz Graham ended up giving it to Lowe but if he had gone to Corhen, Flagg was in position to knock the pass down.
Flagg then turns to the right of Corhen as Lowe squares up against Sion James. As Corhen gets low and establishes himself in the paint, Flagg slips around behind him and gets on his left as the pass comes in and swipes it. He’s already heading downcourt.
You can tell Lowe is thinking “oh fudge!” Well, that’s close enough to what he was thinking anyway.
James straightens up to get out of the way as Flagg heads downcourt. Lowe is turning to shadow him downcourt and the race is on.
Lowe turns and tries to force Flagg to the baseline but Flagg is faster and bigger and more powerful and will not be contained.
It’s hard to tell if the ball briefly got away from him or if he just pushed it way out in front on purpose but it doesn’t matter because he caught up with it.
When he does, he’s already beaten Lowe in that particular foot race.
Diaz Graham is streaking downcourt too and at 7-0, he’s much more able to contest the dunk than Lowe.
By the time he reaches the three point line, Lowe knows he can’t catch him so he falls back and tries to strip Flagg from behind, which fails. Flagg plants his foot between the first and second hash mark on the lane and starts up. Diaz Graham tries to contest the shot but he’s a step off and doesn’t jump nearly high enough and fouls Flagg, even as he pulls his hand away while getting posterized.
Then Flagg lands and goes chin-to-chin with Diaz Graham as the ref blows the whistle, giving him a three point play.
His second dunk is also great and again at the expense of Diaz Graham and also Corhen, who starts to go after it but then thinks better of it.
Afterwards, Tyrese Proctor said this: “That was probably the best dunks I’ve ever seen, for sure, in person. It was crazy. That (stuff) was wild.”
For his part, Flagg modestly said it was in his personal top three.
By the way, here’s another great angle. Check out the bench shot at the end too.