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With the Duke Blue Devils in the Final Four and the NBA Draft just three months away, it would be foolish to expect that the Cooper Flagg hype train will slow down any time too soon. The presumptive National Player of the Year could add a National Title to his short but wildly impressive collegiate resume in just eight days, and then unless he goes on to make one of the most stunning draft-related decisions in recent memory, Flagg will just have to wait a couple of months until the NBA Draft Lottery determines which team will end up making him the 1st overall pick in late June.
Cooper Flagg's status as the 1st overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft is fairly secure, but what is less solidified is what sort of player we can expect Flagg to be once he's in the NBA. Some scouts see Kevin Garnett. Others see Kawhi Leonard. Larry Bird, Grant Hill and Andrei Kirilenko have all been mentioned as possible outcomes. The Cooper Flagg comparison game is one that basically everyone with a platform has participated in at some point over the last six months.
While working through potential NBA comparisons for Duke's star freshman, one of the players Dan Patrick mentioned was Kevin Love, who given his position, his high school pedigree, and his appearance — i.e. he's white — is a somewhat natural choice for Cooper Flagg to be compared to. However, Patrick made it clear that he believed it would be a letdown if Flagg's NBA career went as Love's did.
“If you said his career was going to be like Kevin Love's, would that be a disappointment? And it probably would be, because this is someone who scrimmaged against the US Olympic Team, held his own, he's 18 years of age and he's probably going to make a billion dollars if he stays healthy,” Patrick said on Friday afternoon.
Not long after Kevin Love caught what many believed to be a stray shot from Dan Patrick, the 17-year NBA veteran took to social media to react and weigh in on how he felt about Cooper Flagg as an NBA prospect.
“For those who will take this as a shot at me…I don’t take it as such,” Love said in a tweet. “I was pure skill & will. Cooper is far more talented than I ever was and if he stays healthy will have a far better career. He could very well have a statue by the time he’s finished. I’m a HUGE fan.”
Like Flagg, Love was a consensus All-American and the recipient of the conference Player of the Year award during his freshman season at UCLA. Though he wasn't the top pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, Love was selected 5th overall and made an instant impact during his first season in the NBA, averaging 11 points and 9 rebounds per game as a rookie.
During his eight-year NBA peak, Kevin Love averaged 20 points, 11.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game with 44-37-83 shooting splits. In that stretch, Love named an All-Star five times and finished in the top four in both points and rebounds per game in two separate seasons. If Flagg's offensive ceiling resembles Love's it would be a huge win, especially considering his defensive upside is much higher than Love's was.
