Cooper Flagg exceeds unimaginably high expectations

Cooper Flagg’s first basketball role model wasn’t LeBron James, Stephen Curry, or any other modern NBA megastar.

It was a player who retired 14 years before the ballyhooed Duke freshman was even born.

When Flagg and his twin brother, Ace, were in elementary school in his hometown of Newport, Maine, their parents bought them DVDs about the life and career of Larry Bird. Cooper Flagg would lie on the living room floor and watch documentaries about Bird and his rivalry with Magic Johnson. Or he would pass the time in the back of the family’s Chrysler minivan on the way to practice and watch replays of the entire game over and over again from the 1985-86 Celtics season.

The purpose, according to Flagg’s parents, was more than simply introducing their sons to a Boston Celtics legend and to one of the franchise’s most beloved championship teams. Kelly and Ralph Flagg would point out that Bird was the Celtics’ best player and leading scorer, but look at how he disrupted opposing offenses by anticipating passes, diving for loose balls and sacrificing good shots for bigs.

“What we tried to instill in our kids is that no matter how much you can have an impact on winning, that’s the most important thing,” Kelly Flagg, co-captain of the University of Maine women’s team in 1999, told Yahoo Sports in November last year. “That’s really to me what Larry Bird embodies as a player. He did what the team needed him to do night in and night out. Cooper is the same way. He’s not someone who wants to execute it dirty work that is beneath him.”

The basketball education Flagg received from studying Bird helped shape the kind of prospect he would become. Scouts rave about Flagg’s winning mentality, unmatched competitiveness and relentless drive to get better as much as they do his rare combination of size, coordination, skill and athleticism.

Although he only turned 18 last month, Flagg leads Duke in every statistical category, from points to rebounds to assists to blocks to steals. The supposed no. 1 pick in next June’s NBA Draft has bumped the Blue Devils to No. 2 in the AP Top 25, thanks to big nonleague wins over Auburn and Arizona and an 8-0 start in ACC play.

It’s not like Flagg’s first six weeks at Duke were disappointing, but recently he’s taken a leap as he’s gotten more comfortable as the face of one of college basketball’s most storied programs. Questions about whether Flagg has a chance to become a no. 1 scoring opportunity at the NBA level has faded as he has shown the ability to chase mismatches and create his own shot in half-court situations.

Flagg has averaged 23.4 points, 6.9 rebounds and 4.6 assists over his last eight games while also shooting 55% from the field and 50% from behind the arc. It’s the most dominant stretch by a freshman since Zion Williamson abused rims and blew through shoes at Duke in 2019.

“The Coop thing, he just keeps getting better,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after Flagg dropped 28 points on Boston College in an 88-63 victory Saturday. “He started the year well, but he’s just reached a new level with what he’s doing and his confidence.”

Before his recent hot streak, Flagg was already entrenched as college basketball’s top prospect. Now he has also established himself as the pinnacle of college basketball playerafter overtaking Auburn’s Johni Broome as the betting favorite to win the Wooden Award and distanced himself from long-shot candidates like Marquette’s Kam Jones, Alabama’s Mark Sears and Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson.

Broome averaged 17.9 points, 10.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists while helping Auburn emerge as a surprise national title contender, but the 6-foot-10 senior has been sidelined since getting a high ankle sprain at South Carolina on Jan. 11. -ranked Tigers beat a pair of AP Top 25 teams in Broome’s absence last week and may face sixth-ranked Tennessee without him on Saturday.

While Broome has been out of sight while stuck in a walking boot, Flagg has produced the kind of jaw-dropping highlights that elevate a college basketball phenom to the mainstream.

There was Flagg’s midseason dunk-of-the-year contender on Jan. 7, a vicious one-handed slam over Pittsburgh 7-footer Guillermo Diaz Graham.

There was Flagg’s 42-point explosion four days later against Notre Dame, an ACC freshman record that required just 14 field-goal attempts.

And there was Flagg’s New England homecoming at Boston College, a tour de force highlighted by this soaring dunks and this icy gaze.

“I think I have a pinch-me moment almost every week at this point,” Flagg told reporters after the win over Boston College. “This was my dream, my whole life, to be in the position I’m in right now. I’m just trying to enjoy it.”

Now national player of the year Flagg is to lose, even playing in a downtrodden ACC without a single other Top 25 team. He has a white-knuckle grip that realistically can only be loosened if Flagg goes away or Broome returns with a vengeance and gets Auburn’s title push in a historically strong SEC.

It should come as no surprise that Flagg has exceeded unimaginably high expectations so far this season. The expected no. 1 pick has made remarkable feats seem ordinary since he first picked up a basketball.

This is a kid who has been playing against boys three or four years his senior since grade school and eventually had to leave his home state of Maine to find adequate competition. At 15, he led the US U-17 World Cup team to a gold medal and became USA Basketball’s youngest male athlete of the year award winner. At 16, he guided a group of unheralded players from Maine to the Peach Jam title game and entrenched himself as the No. 1 player in its class. At 17, he was the only teenager selected to train with the US men’s national team as it prepared for the Paris Olympics and easily outscored some of the NBA’s biggest superstars.

“It was another moment where we’re all shaking our heads and looking at each other in the gym,” Flagg’s longtime coach, Matt Mackenzie, told Yahoo Sports last year. “Every time we put a challenge in front of this kid, he not only gets ready, he blows it out of the water.”

Before Flagg hit the floor at Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time, he made the AP’s 2024-25 preseason All-American team. To no one’s surprise, Flagg validated the pick immediately, making an immediate impact with his ball-hawking instincts, his ability to find open teammates and his ability to finish in transition.

The real question for NBA scouts was whether Flagg was able to create offense in half-court situations. Could he take advantage of a mismatch and create rejection? Could he knock down an open 3-pointer if he got free behind the arc?

For starters, Flagg had some big stage moments where he looked his age. Two costly turnovers in the last minute against Kentucky served as a learning experience. So did another key giveaway down against Kansas in the last minute.

Since then, Scheyer has found creative ways to get his best players mismatches and room to operate. Flagg has also made massive improvements as a shot creator, blowing off big balls off the dribble, bullying his way to the rim against guards and looking for teammates if the defense collapses on him. He’s even caught fire as a spot-up shooter when defenders go under ball screens and don’t respect his 3-point range.

Years ago, Kelly Flagg dreamed that Cooper might one day be drafted by her beloved Boston Celtics.

“We’re from New England,” she said. “We bleed green.”

Now, with the Celtics fighting for the NBA title and Flagg a near shoo-in to be the No. 1 overall, it is no longer a realistic possibility.

Flagg will always draw inspiration from Larry Bird, but the recipient will be another NBA team.