Rookie forward Caleb Wilson quickly established himself as an electrifying up-and-coming NBA player in his four Las Vegas Summer League games. There’s now a roughly two-and-a-half month span between the conclusion of summer and the start of Bulls training camp for the 2026-27 NBA season.
From the moment of his introductory Bulls press conference, the ever-confident Bulls rookie declared his bar for his inaugural Bulls season is set at winning NBA Rookie-of-the-Year.
After completing the opening stanza of his NBA career in Las Vegas, Wilson should clearly be in NBA Rookie-of-the-Year conversations throughout the 2026-27 NBA regular season, and he can build a strong case for winning the award by adding a few ingredients to his NBA game.
Benchmarking the reigning NBA Rookie-of-the-Year, Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg is a good comparison for what sub goals Wilson should set for himself to position himself as the leading candidate to win the 2026-27 NBA Rookie-of-the-Year award.
It starts with usage rate
Flagg finished the 2025-26 NBA season with a 26.9% usage rate according to Basketball Reference, meaning that Flagg, when on the floor, directly accounted for 27% of the Mavericks team's offensive plays ending in either a field goal attempt, free throw attempt, or a turnover. Usage rate is typically a proxy measurement for how much a player plays on the ball in a basketball game.
Wilson should be capable of handling a usage rate comparable to Flagg’s rookie NBA season, as Wilson finished his lone North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball season with a 28.7% usage rate, according to Sports Reference.
Signature games throughout the season
Between December and April of the 2025-26 NBA season, Flagg scored 40+ points four times, with a season high of 51 points on Apr 03, 2026, when Flagg and the Mavericks lost to the Orlando Magic 138-127.
If Wilson’s three-point shooting becomes a repeatable model of what he accomplished in his very first summer league game, then Wilson should easily rack up a signature game body-of-work that will make it difficult to find a better candidate than him for NBA Rookie-of-the-Year.
Dominate the final stretch of the seasons
Flagg, in his final 15 games of the 2025-26 NBA regular season, averaged 24.7 points per game, 6.8 rebounds per game, 1.5 steals per game, and 1.1 blocks per game, according to NBA.com stats.
Simply put, Caleb Wilson must impact all aspects of basketball games at the critical point of the NBA season when voters will start to coalesce their opinions on league award votes.
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