All-Rookie Teams for the 2025-26 NBA season

Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, weighing impact versus potential, and more

The 2025-26 rookie class has largely lived up to enormous expectations. There are a ton of players who project to be anything from a quality role player to a future All-NBAer.

That said, there are an unusual number of high-ceiling/low-floor rookies (seemingly half of whom are on the Pelicans!). To me, there’s a pretty clear gap between the top seven rookies and everyone else, and heavily-flawed players fill the Second Team. That’s typically how it goes.

However, I’ve never had such a problem picking between traditional box-score-filler-uppers on bad teams and small-stats darlings contributing to winning basketball. We’ve seen a lot more of the latter than we typically do. How do you weigh potential versus present-day impact? An increasing number of rookies came in and were positive forces right away on good teams. They probably should be rewarded.

I am very unhappy with the balance I’ve struck.

Reminder: The NBA’s 65-game qualification rule does not apply to All-Rookie teams.

All-Rookie First Team

Cooper Flagg, Dallas Mavericks

The #1 pick wasn’t quite the promised defensive destroyer, but he made up for it with a far stronger scoring vocabulary than I expected.

The three-point shot waxed and waned, but he was a dominant bucket-getter anywhere around the basket. Off the dribble with either hand, silky fadeaways, brutish post play, tricksy footwork married to soft touch. Defenders had no idea what to do with Flagg when he was 18 years old and routinely shattering every age-related record LeBron James had set; how can they hope to stop him when he has a few seasons under his belt?

Generous rounding grants Flagg averages of 20/7/5 while shooting a hair under 70% at the rim. The fact that he isn’t the runaway ROY winner speaks to the shocking success of our next honoree.

Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

I’m not a college guy, so I’ll be honest: I was skeptical of Kon. Books, I shan’t judge thy covers e’er again.

It’s not just that his perceived weaknesses weren’t dealbreakers, although his surprisingly stout defense (particularly chasing guys around screens) does a lot to raise his floor. It’s that his strengths are so much stronger than he showed at Duke!

Knueppel is cracking 43.3% of his triples this season on 8.0 attempts per game. Of qualifying players, that’s the 10th-most tries in the league, and the best accuracy of anyone shooting even five per game. The craziest thing? He’s actually shooting a hair better on pull-up triples than catch-and-shoots. Creating a three off the dribble is superstar stuff, and very few players do it better than Knueppel.

He doesn’t get to the rim a ton, but he has some of the league’s best touch from the short midrange. Knueppel is a scorer, not a shooter, and that’s an important distinction. If the defense holds up in the playoffs (right now, teams prefer to go at LaMelo Ball, anyway), I’m not putting a cap on his potential.

VJ Edgecombe, Philadelphia 76ers

Edgecombe is putting up 16/6/4 while shooting 36% from beyond the arc on decent volume (he had a 7-for-15 game from deep the other day!). He’s developing an off-the-dribble game that utilizes his bursty athleticism, and he’s theater in transition.

He’s also a beast in the clutch! I had a bunch of lines in my notebook about Edgecombe’s hitting clutch jumper after clutch jumper, and lo and behold, his 12 clutch three-pointers are second-most in the league! On a team with Tyrese Maxey, Paul George, and Joel Embiid (well, some of the time), it would be easy for him to defer in big moments. Instead, he jumps into the limelight:

Edgecombe is also a pretty good defender. He’s listed at 6’4”, 180 pounds, but he looks and plays much, much stronger than that weight would indicate.

There’s some pre-injury Victor Oladipo to Edgecombe’s game, but he might be an even better athlete than the former Slam Dunk Contest participant. Advanced stats, typically bearish on rookies, already think he’s an above-average player, and he’ll never be worse than this.