Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving Are Already Working Out Together and Dallas Is the League's Biggest Fantasy Unknown

Kyrie Irving and Cooper Flagg have been working out together in Los Angeles ahead of the Dallas Mavericks' unusually early start to the season, with the team scheduled to hold media day on September 25 before heading to Macao to face the Houston Rockets in the NBA China Games on October 9 and 11.

Irving has not played an NBA game since tearing his left ACL in the spring of 2025, missing the entire 2025-26 season. He is targeting the season opener. Flagg, the reigning Rookie of the Year, enters his second season as the player the franchise is built around. How those two fit together is the single largest unanswered question in fantasy basketball this fall.

The usage math nobody has solved

Flagg spent his rookie season as a primary option on a team without Irving. That is the context for every number in his rookie profile, and it is the context drafters keep ignoring when they quote his per-game averages back at each other.

Irving at full health is a high-usage guard who dominates the ball in late-clock situations and takes a large share of a team's shot creation. Adding him to a roster that also features Anthony Davis and a second-year star means someone's touches go down. The question is whose.

The optimistic case for Flagg is that his game does not depend on ball dominance. He scores in transition, on cuts, on the offensive glass and out of actions that do not require him to dribble the air out of the ball. Players with that profile absorb a high-usage teammate better than ball-dominant scorers do, and their efficiency often improves when a creator arrives.

The pessimistic case is simpler: there are only so many shots, and a healthy Irving takes a lot of them.

What Irving is at this stage

A guard returning from a torn ACL after missing a full season is one of the hardest projections in fantasy sports. The injury itself is well understood and the return-to-play protocols are mature, but the second season after the injury has historically been better than the first, and the first is often characterized by minutes restrictions, rest days on back-to-backs and inconsistent explosion.

Dallas has every reason to be conservative. The team is building around a 19-year-old and a veteran core, and the games that matter are in April and May rather than October. Expect minutes management, expect games off, and expect the fantasy community to declare Irving finished in November and then watch him look like himself in January.

The correct draft-day position: Irving is a value pick two or three rounds after his healthy price, not a player to reach for. Managers who can absorb early-season volatility get the upside. Managers who need production in week one should look elsewhere.

Anthony Davis is the swing vote

Davis remains the most productive fantasy player on this roster when healthy, and his availability has been the defining variable of his career. A frontcourt of Davis and Flagg is one of the best defensive combinations in the league, which matters for both players' blocks and steals totals.

The fantasy tension is rebounding. Two high-usage frontcourt players competing for the same boards suppress each other's counting stats, and that effect is real even when the lineup works on the court. Drafters taking both should understand they are buying correlated risk.

The Verdexed model take

Verdexed's model projects Dallas with the widest confidence band of any contending roster in the league, and the width comes from three sources: Irving's return from a major knee injury, Flagg's second-season usage in a changed environment and Davis's availability history.

The model's central projection has Flagg's per-game scoring roughly flat with his rookie season while his efficiency improves, which is the outcome most drafters are not pricing. The market assumes either a large leap or a usage-driven decline. The model's read is that the two effects largely cancel.

On the team side, the model likes Dallas more than a market that has been burned by Irving and Davis availability in the past, and the gap shows up in the win total rather than in the championship price. That is usually where value lives with a team carrying injury questions: the futures market overprices the tail outcomes and underprices the regular season floor.

What to do in your draft

Draft Flagg at his market price without expecting a massive statistical leap. He is a second-year player on a crowded roster, and his real fantasy breakout is more likely in his third season than his second.

Draft Irving at a discount and be patient. Draft Davis with a plan for the 20 games he misses.

The genuinely underpriced Mavericks assets are the role players whose minutes rise every time one of the three stars sits, and on this roster that happens frequently. In leagues with deep benches, holding the first man off the Dallas bench is a cheap way to own the injury upside of an expensive roster.

The Macao factor

Dallas and Houston are the only two teams playing meaningful basketball in early October, which makes their two games in Macao the first live look at the season for everyone. For Dallas specifically, those games are the first chance to see Irving in an NBA uniform in more than a year.

Drafters should watch the minutes, not the box score. A preseason game in Macao tells nothing about whether Irving can still score. It tells a lot about whether Dallas trusts his knee enough to play him 25 minutes across a back-to-back on the other side of the world.

What is next

Media day on Friday brings the first official word on Irving's status for opening night, and the language the team uses matters. A team saying a player is on track is different from a team saying a player will be evaluated, and fantasy managers drafting in the last week of September should wait for the Friday quotes before finalizing their rankings.

Flagg's sophomore season is the story that will define the franchise. Irving's knee is the story that will define the season.