Luka Doncic might've actually gifted Cooper Flagg Rookie of the Year after all

It's official — Dallas Mavericks star Cooper Flagg is the 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year, receiving 56 first-place votes over Kon Knueppel's 44. Flagg should've won it regardless, but thanks to Luka Dončić (and Cade Cunningham!) winning his appeal to be eligible for end-of-season awards, the league didn't collect ballots until after the play-in tournament started.

Knueppel shot 2-of-12 from the field and 0-of-6 from three for six points in Charlotte's 127-126 overtime win over Miami in the play-in on April 14. Charles Lee benched the rookie down the stretch in favor of Coby White.

Kon had a chance to bounce back in the Hornets' second play-in game and help secure a playoff berth, but he had only 11 points on 3-of-10 shooting from the field and 1-of-6 from deep in the 121-90 loss that ended their season.

The postseason isn't supposed to matter when it comes to end-of-season awards, but Dončić and Cunningham inadvertently helped sway voters who were on the fence between Flagg and Knueppel with their appeals. Reggie Miller came out and said that he changed his vote from Kon to Cooper after watching the Hornets' rookie come up cold in two games in the play-in.

In the end, Dončić and Flagg won.

Cooper Flagg wins 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year over Knueppel

To think that the outcome of the ROY race might've gone differently had Dončić not suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain at the beginning of April. He came up one game short of hitting the 65-game mark, missing two games in December to travel back to Slovenia for the birth of his second daughter. The same goes for Cunningham, whose regular season ended in March after he suffered a collapsed lung.

Charlotte fans probably think it's unfair that some voters held Knueppel's play-in games against him, but you can't blame Flagg for that. Anyway, if Cooper was on the same stage as Kon was in the play-in, it's safe to assume he wouldn't have been a non-factor in back-to-back games.

Who knows how close voting would've been if ballots had been collected before the play-in started, as they usually are. The race was coming down to the wire in the final weeks of the regular season, but Flagg distanced himself in a big way from his former Duke teammate with his 51-point and 45-point outings at the beginning of April.

The feel-good story of the Hornets, who were genuinely one of the best teams in the league during the second half of the season, gave Knueppel some added momentum in his favor, just for him to erase it all in the play-in.

In the end, the award went to who deserved it most.

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