NBA
Ex-NBA champion says Cooper Flagg doesn’t deserve the hype: ‘One-time All-Star’
Antonio is a life long sports enthusiast and professional journalist, who shares an obssesive urge to find and dig up the most interesting facts to guide gamblers towards more exciting, yet safe bets. In his own words, ''you can never really know enough about the things you love''.
All posts by Antonio KozlowUpdated26 May 2025
Despite the fact that Cooper Flagg earned pretty much every individual accolade he could during his freshman year in college, he still has some detractors who don’t see the potential in him. However, this last one isn’t just any critic, it was ex-Celtics NBA champion Tony Allen.
The Boston icon doesn’t believe the Duke superstar will bring a generational change to the basketball league, and simply sees him as an another athlete who won’t live up to all the expectation around him. “I don’t think Cooper Flagg is going to turn your franchise around like that,” Allen said recently.
In a GrindCityMedia video, the former player compared him to a future Hall of Famer. “I’m serious. I ain’t seeing [Kevin Durant],” he insisted during the interview posted online. “I’m just not seeing all that. I’m seeing Andrei Kirilenko. That’s who I’m seeing, bro.”
Even though he’s projected as the upcoming No. 1 pick and most around the Mavericks‘ organization expecting him to transform the franchise, Allen buried the 18-year-old. “He going to be a one-time All-Star. I don’t see it, bro. Just not hyped on these Duke kids,” Tony added.
The Dallas coach, on the other hand, can’t help but start to envision what his next season might look like, considering they are so close to taking the No. 1 pick of the draft back to Texas. “I see a young man who is only 18 years old who can do a lot of things,” Jason Kidd shared at the start of last week.
“He won’t be 19 until December, which is really surprising, but I think when you talk about being able to play 2 through 4, and in today’s game, you might be able to sneak him around the five, if we’re going to label him as a position player. Maybe there’s still some growth, only being 18, he could still grow,” he added.
Now the Texan organization can only hope that Flagg will end up as the top pick in the draft, as the 6-foot-9 forward has been considered the front-runner ever since he decided to graduate from high school a year early to enroll in college as a 17-year-old.
