Grant Hill On Cooper Flagg

Basically, he’s on the way but has not arrived yet

With the Olympics getting underway in Paris, Grant Hill is a busy man. We featured an interview with the former Duke great on Saturdays YouTube Gold about the 2024 US Olympic basketball team and now here he is on the Dan Patrick Show talking about Cooper Flagg’s perfomance with the Select Team. Here’s what he said when Patrick asked him if Flagg had been considered for a spot on the team:

“No, he had a good day, he had some good moments. He’s going to have a great college season I hope, but I know he’ll have a great NBA season, but no, he had a good day, he had a really good day. That was documented on social media, people saw the clips but he still has some growth to do, and I think that he would acknowledge that as well. He may be a guy that’s in consideration in 4 years, we’ll see.”

That’s fairly blunt and honest. The truth is that you could be the most talented player in the world but if you’re 17, you just don’t have the knowledge to play at the highest level. That’s doubly true because it’s a team game. So while Mike Tyson could be a world champ at just 20, like all boxers he fought alone. You can’t do that in basketball obviously and one young guy can bog things down.

But as Hill says, he has a promising future and we may see him on the team in 2028.

• Grant Hill’s interview on the Dan Patrick Show 7/26/24