Duke forward Cooper Flagg is projected to be the No. 1 pick for the 2025 NBA Draft. It’s no surprise after his stellar freshman season, where he averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.4 steals, and 1.4 blocks per game and earned the Wooden Award as the top college basketball player.
Between his two-way versatility, defensive prowess, and playmaking ability, Flagg will be a franchise cornerstone for the Dallas Mavericks, who won the lottery with a 1.8% chance and are likely to select him on June 25.
But ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith says there’s something besides just raw talent behind Flagg’s status as the projected No. 1 draft pick. White privilege is also apparently a factor in the equation.
Jason Whitlock plays the clip of Smith explaining why the Dallas Mavericks have no choice but to draft Cooper Flagg.
“When you got somebody with that kind of potential and they’re white and you are in America, you keep that dude,” said Smith. “Texas is different, and in Dallas, Texas, if you got an opportunity to get Cooper Flagg, you take Cooper Flagg – especially when you just let go of Luka Dončić.”
Smith argued that being a white American superstar in the NBA, a league with few white American stars, makes Flagg highly marketable, drawing parallels to Larry Bird.
“I don’t understand why ESPN allows this other than obviously they’re in the racial division business like a lot of the rest of the media,” says Jason Whitlock.
“There is, for whatever reason, this undeniable urge or push for ESPN to utilize this race-baiting tactics,” adds “Fearless” contributor Jay Skapinac, host of the “Skap Attack.”
“Sports to me are the ultimate merit-based entity really. … The best should be the ones playing; the best should be the ones picked; the best should be the ones dictating the merchandising dollars, and so forth,” he continues, noting that Smith’s suggestion that top-tier white players are rare and therefore valuable falls flat when you consider that “for five years the best player in the NBA has been Nikola Jokić by wide margin.”
To see the footage of Smith’s comments and hear more of Jason and Skap’s conversation, watch the episode above.
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