With the NBA playoff race heating up, major awards and honors are inevitable.
So much has been said about the coveted MVP race, but fans are quickly forgetting about the Rookie of the Year race featuring two dazzling first-year players battling it out.
Dallas Mavericks star Cooper Flagg was the runaway favorite entering the year, but Charlotte Hornets sharpshooting guard Kon Knueppel has taken the league by storm.
It’s not every year NBA fans are privileged with two rookies fighting neck-and-neck for the award. The race perhaps hasn’t been this tightly contested in several years.
With less than two weeks left before the end of the regular season and the start of the play-in tournament, rookies have a matter of just days to win over voters.
A lot can change in only a handful of games
Rising NBA superstar continues to lag behind familiar foe
Throughout the NBA season, the league’s website has been revealing a weekly Rookie of the Year ladder.
Now that we are in April and ready for spring, the second-to-last weekly ladder has been released, and Mavericks fans will again dread seeing the same name at the top.
Knueppel, who was Flagg’s college teammate at Duke, once again claims the No. 1 spot.
For well over a month, Knuppel has edged out Flagg for the top spot. The Charlotte guard has contributed to an incredibly unsuspecting Hornets turnaround. The team has gone 29-14 since the turn of the calendar. That record would’ve looked even better if it weren’t for some recent losses.
Charlotte is four games above .500 — something few would’ve predicted before the season — and locked into the play-in tournament. The team has an outside chance of sneaking its way into the postseason, but it’ll need to win two qualifying games first. That’ll be tough but very doable considering all the Hornets have accomplished this year.
GettyCharlotte Hornets’ Kon Knueppel during a game against the New York Knicks in November 2025
Meanwhile, Knueppel hasn’t let his foot off the gas. He is averaging slightly under 19 points per game while shooting better than 43% from the 3-point line. In a recent game against the New York Knicks, Knueppel connected on six of 10 shots from beyond the arc.
Whether Charlotte makes noise this April is beside the fact that Knueppel is a future cornerstone of his team. He’ll be launching 3s for years to come.
Are Flagg’s ROTY chances all but over?
Flagg hasn’t appeared atop NBA.com’s ladder in many weeks. However, this ranking isn’t a reflection of the actual voters. Flagg may sit behind his rookie counterpart in the race, but he could absolutely make up for lost ground over these final regular season games.
The 19-year-old Dallas star has been as good as advertised all season and produces over 20 points per game on a relatively efficient (by rookie standards) 46.7% shooting from the floor.
What’s helped drag down his case is team success, or lack thereof.
The Mavericks are once again lottery-destined. They suffered their 52nd loss of the season the other night in an ugly 24-point beatdown at the hands of the drama-disturbed Milwaukee Bucks.
The fallout of the Luka Doncic trade hasn’t helped matters for Flagg. He still hears fans reminiscing about the good-old days, why Nico Harrison is the worst human being ever and the Mavs pulling off, as the kids like to call it, “a generational sell.”
Not only that, Flagg remains the only offensive creator on his team. Think about that. A rookie at the top of every opposing teams’ defensive gameplan entering a game. They are all selling out on one player — because he doesn’t really have much around him! — and Flagg’s production is still borderline elite by veteran standards. He’s a rookie.
In the end, the award may fall into Knueppel hands because he is simply in a position to play a more impactful team-oriented role, but that’s not to say he isn’t absolutely deserving of Rookie of the Year.
Flagg and Knueppel will battle it out for just under two more weeks.
The race could get spicier by the day.
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