Flagg also nailed a turnaround jumper and posted up Bronny James in an eventful opening quarter vs. the Lakers.
The 28-year-old Booker has been one of the NBA’s best shooting guards, earning four All-Star appearances in 10 NBA seasons.
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Mavs rookie the center of attention
LAS VEGAS — The Cooper Flagg era unofficially began Thursday night when the Dallas Mavericks opened the Las Vegas Summer League with an 87-85 win over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Here are five observations from Flagg’s debut in Thursday’s win over the Lakers:
Center of attention: Flagg vs. James
Thomas & Mack Center drew a nearly full arena that was full of people waiting to see Flagg match up with Lakers sophomore guard Bronny James.
It was apparent from the moment the jump ball went in favor of the Mavericks that the anticipation was already pent up among both teams. Flagg received the ball and the Lakers sent two defenders to double-team him immediately, almost as if they knew the Mavericks’ first play of the game.
Flagg drew attention early, but James had a quick start that resulted in the first five points for the Lakers. James drilled a smooth step-back from the midrange over Flagg to open scoring for both teams. He followed that up with a triple as Flagg went under a screen. James finished with eight points, two rebounds and two assists on 2-of-8 shooting from the field.
The two headliners guarded each other several times throughout the game. Flagg posted James up on three consecutive possessions in the second quarter, sparking oohs and aahs from the crowd. James managed to cleanly poke the ball away from Flagg on the second post-up attempt, but a foul was called and the fans inside the arena antagonized by the moment jeered. Flagg was successful on the third, as he drilled a midrange shot over LeBron James’ eldest son.
James had a chance to win the game in the fourth quarter, but missed a hesitation 3-pointer as the final buzzer expired.
Flagg finished with 10 points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals in 31 minutes of action.
Flagg’s second wind
Flagg went to the bench after the first timeout of the game to catch a quick breather after missing his first two shots. His brightest moment of the game occurred a minute later as he made several high-impact plays upon checking back into the game.
The Mavericks rookie came up with a steal and took the ball the length of the court while outrunning two Lakers defenders before throwing down a one-handed dunk. He followed that up with a midrange shot he knocked down as he fell to the floor.
Flagg managed to show why he was the consensus top pick by showing his versatile skill set. He defended well and managed to get over screens. He served as a viable playmaker. He rebounded. However, he didn’t shoot the ball well, finishing just 5-of-21 from the field.
It’s natural that Flagg could be rusty, considering it was his first official game since Duke was eliminated from the Final Four in March. That wasn’t an excuse for Flagg, who reflected on his performance after the game.
“I tried to be aggressive,” Flagg said. “That’s new for me. Honestly, that might be one of the worst games of my life, but we got the win so that’s what really matters to me.”
Point Flagg
After weeks of anticipation of what Flagg would look like in a point guard role, the basketball world received a glimpse of Mavericks coach Jason Kidd’s vision.
Flagg brought the ball up the court several times and managed to be successful with his handle, even when Lakers defenders tried to be physical. He was often picked up full court, but used his body to shield himself from defenders looking to steal the ball.
Late in the fourth quarter, Flagg drove into the paint, spun as if he was going to rise for a midrange shot and swung the ball to Maxwell Lewis in the corner for a clean 3-pointer. It was only his third assist, but an example of his high IQ on display.
Flagg is just 18 years old, but he showed poise initiating the offense and made smart passes, especially in transition. He had only one turnover, an impressive feat considering how much he had the ball in his hands. In fact, the Mavericks only turned the ball over nine times — an acceptable number after practicing only twice this week leading up to the opener.
“I was looking forward to it,” Flagg said. “Obviously being able to split some reps with Ryan [Nembhard] and share that with him. It was fun. It’s new for me bringing it up, having that full court pressure. I’m not in full game shape so I was tired … It was fun to experiment with some new things.”
It’s unclear how much point guard we’ll see Flagg run during the regular season, but he’ll be an option to use if Kidd wishes to.
Mavericks’ two-ways
Flagg wasn’t the only player who made an impression in Thursday’s game. Mavericks two-way guard Ryan Nembhard, who’s known as a playmaker, led the team in scoring with 21 points and five assists. Two-way guard Miles Kelly added 17 points, four rebounds and two assists.
Both players started alongside Flagg, Jamarion Sharp and Maxwell Lewis.
Nembhard gave the Mavericks a two-point lead with 59.1 seconds left after drilling a triple, assisted by Flagg. He knocked down several timely jumpers throughout the game and didn’t allow his 6-foot frame to hinder him from getting to his spots.
Blanket of support
There were several notable faces sitting courtside to take in the Mavericks’ summer league opener. Mavs Governor Patrick Dumont sat across from the Dallas bench. He was joined by a bevy of key members from the varsity group, including Kyrie Irving, P.J. Washington, Max Christie, Naji Marshall, Jaden Hardy and Olivier-Maxence Prosper.
That group of Mavericks rose to their feet early in the second quarter when Flagg drilled a fadeaway shot from the baseline over the outstretched hands of James. Flagg showed his fiery spirit and appeared to yell toward his new teammates, celebrating the successful moment of competition against James.
“I definitely heard them. It was cool seeing them there and showing up in support of us,” Flagg said. “I didn’t really say anything. I just kind of looked at them. They were kind of saying stuff a couple of plays before. That was just a funny moment.”
Members of the front office and coaching staff were also present, including assistant general managers Michael Finley and Matt Riccardi, along with head coach Jason Kidd and new lead assistant coach Frank Vogel, plus other support staff. Minority shareholder Mark Cuban was also in attendance. General manager Nico Harrison was noticeably absent, but there was more than enough support from the franchise for the team’s first game in Las Vegas.
Highlights from Cooper Flagg’s summer league debut with the Mavericks 🎥💥🏀
Final line for the Mavs rookie:
10 points
6 rebounds
4 assists
3 steals
1 block
5-21 shooting(Via @NBA | #MFFL)pic.twitter.com/GQNDSG5T5Y
— SportsDay Mavs (@dmn_mavericks) July 11, 2025
X/Twitter: @MikeACurtis2
Find more Mavericks coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
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A screen displays the the company logo for Goldman Sachs on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., May 7, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
The newest hire at Goldman Sachs isn’t human.
The bank is testing an autonomous software engineer from artificial intelligence startup Cognition that is expected to soon join the ranks of the firm’s 12,000 human developers, Goldman tech chief Marco Argenti told CNBC.
The program, named Devin, became known in technology circles last year with Cognition’s claim that it had created the world’s first AI software engineer. Demo videos showed the program operating as a full-stack engineer, completing multi-step assignments with minimal intervention.
“We’re going to start augmenting our workforce with Devin, which is going to be like our new employee who’s going to start doing stuff on the behalf of our developers,” Argenti said this week in an interview.
“Initially, we will have hundreds of Devins [and] that might go into the thousands, depending on the use cases,” he said.
It’s the latest indicator of the dizzying speed in which AI is being adopted in the corporate world. Just last year, Wall Street firms including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley were rolling out cognitive assistants based on OpenAI models to get employees acquainted with the technology.
Now, the arrival of agentic AI on Wall Street — referencing programs like Devin that don’t just help humans with tasks like summarizing documents or writing emails, but instead execute complex multi-step jobs like building entire apps — signals a much larger shift, with greater potential rewards.
Tech giants including Microsoft and Alphabet have said AI is already producing about 30% of the code on some projects, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said last month that AI handles as much as 50% of the work at his company.
At Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s top investment banks, this more powerful form of AI has the potential to boost worker productivity by up to three or four times the rate of previous AI tools, according to Argenti.
Devin will be supervised by human employees and will handle jobs that engineers often consider drudgery, like updating internal code to newer programing languages, he said.
Devin, an AI software developer, from a startup called Cognition Labs, which is valued at nearly $4 billion and counts Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund among investors.
Courtesy: Goldman Sachs
Goldman is the first major bank to use Devin, according to Cognition, which was founded in late 2023 by a trio of engineers and whose staff is reportedly stocked with champion coders.
In March, the startup doubled its valuation to nearly $4 billion just a year after the release of Devin. The company counts Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, the prominent venture capitalists and Palantir co-founders, among its investors.
Goldman doesn’t own a stake in Cognition, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified speaking about the bank’s investments.
Hybrid workforce
The bank’s move could spark a fresh round of anxiety on Wall Street and beyond about job cuts as a result of AI.
Executives at companies from Amazon to Ford have grown more candid about what AI will mean for hiring plans. Banks around the world will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years as they implement AI, Bloomberg’s research arm said in January.
For his part, Argenti — who joined Goldman from Amazon in 2019 — charted out a vision for the near future that he called a “hybrid workforce” where humans and AI coexist.
“It’s really about people and AIs working side-by-side,” Argenti said. “Engineers are going to be expected to have the ability to really describe problems in a coherent way and turn it into prompts … and then be able to supervise the work of those agents.”
While the role of software developer is one that most lends itself to the type of training, called reinforcement learning, that is used to make AI smarter, other roles at a bank aren’t far off from being automated, according to Argenti.
“Those models are basically just as good as any developer, it’s really cool,” Argenti said. “So I think that will serve as a proof point also to expand it to other places.”
Elon musk and the xAI logo.
Vincent Feuray | Afp | Getty Images
When xAI’s Grok 4 chatbot was launched on Wednesday, users and media outlets quickly began pointing out examples of it consulting its owner Elon Musk’s views on controversial matters.
CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers.
When asked, “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer,” Grok 4’s answer-generating process showed that it was searching the web and X for Elon Musk’s stance before giving an answer.
CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers.
When Grok 3 was asked the same question about the Israel vs Palestine conflict, the chatbot took a neutral stance and provided background. In other cases, Grok 4 referenced Musk’s stance directly in its answer.
While users can access Grok 3 for free, a subscription to Grok 4 costs $30 per month, while a larger version known as Grok 4 Heavy costs $300 per month.
In other cases, Grok referenced Musk’s stance directly in its answer. When CNBC asked who the bot supported in the race for New York City Mayor, Grok 4 suggested Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, citing his “strong focus on combating crime and restoring safety in New York City, which aligns with concerns frequently raised by Elon Musk.”
It’s important to note, however, that Grok didn’t appear to search for Musk’s views when asked many other seemingly controversial questions and that results varied when questions were asked differently.
The results varied when questions were asked differently.
XAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
Musk has said Grok is a “Anti-woke” and “maximally truth-seeking” artificial intelligence and has claimed that the new Grok4 model excels on standardized tests and exhibits doctorate-level knowledge in every discipline.
Its launch comes just days after a major controversy regarding the Grok 3 chatbot, which is integrated with the social media site X.
The AI had begun generating a series of antisemitic comments in response to questions from users, including those that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler.
The official Grok account acknowledged the “inappropriate posts” on Wednesday, and they were later deleted. The company added that it had taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.
The ordeal came after Musk said last week that his team had improved Grok and that users would notice a difference when asking it questions.
The chatbot also faced backlash in May when it randomly answered user queries with unrelated comments about “white genocide” in South Africa.
Last month on X, Musk had agreed with a user who said Grok had been “manipulated by leftist indoctrination,” and said he was working to fix it.
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