Cooper Flagg is exceeding unfathomably high expectations

Cooper Flagg’s first basketball role model wasn’t LeBron James, Stephen Curry or any other modern-day 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 purchased them DVDs chronicling the life and career of Larry Bird. Cooper Flagg would lie on the living room floor watching documentaries on Bird and on his rivalry with Magic Johnson. Or he’d pass time in the back of the family’s Chrysler minivan on the way to practices watching full-game replays over and over from the 1985-86 Celtics season

The purpose, according to Flagg’s parents, was more than just to introduce 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, yet look how he disrupted opposing offenses by anticipating passes, dove after loose balls and sacrificed good shots for great ones.

“What we tried to instill in our kids is that however you can have an impact on winning, that’s the most important thing,” Kelly Flagg, who co-captained the University of Maine women’s team in 1999, told Yahoo Sports this past November. “That’s really to me what Larry Bird encapsulates as a player. He did whatever the team needed him to do night in and night out. Cooper is the same way. He isn’t somebody who feels like doing the dirty work is beneath him.”

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

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

It’s not like Flagg’s first six weeks at Duke were disappointing, but recently he has taken a leap as he has grown more comfortable as the face of one of college basketball’s most tradition-rich programs. Questions about whether Flagg has a chance to be a No. 1 scoring option at the NBA level have faded as he has displayed the ability to hunt 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 past eight games while also shooting 55% from the field and 50% from behind the arc. That’s the most dominant stretch by a college freshman since Zion Williamson was abusing rims and blowing through shoes at Duke in 2019.

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

Before his recent hot streak, Flagg was already entrenched as college basketball’s top prospect. Now, he’s also established himself as college basketball’s top player, having overtaken 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 out of action since suffering a high ankle sprain at South Carolina on Jan. 11. The top-ranked Tigers beat a pair of AP Top 25 teams in Broome’s absence last week and may have to 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 sort of jaw-dropping highlights that elevate a college basketball phenom into the mainstream.

There was Flagg’s midseason dunk-of-the-year candidate on Jan. 7, a vicious one-handed transition 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 only 14 field-goal attempts.

And there was Flagg’s New England homecoming at Boston College, a tour de force highlighted by this soaring dunk and this ice-cold staredown.

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

Now, national player of the year is Flagg’s 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 fades down the stretch or Broome returns with a vengeance and powers Auburn’s title push in a historically strong SEC.

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

This is a kid who played against boys three or four years older than him since grade school and who eventually had to leave his home state of Maine to find sufficient competition. At 15, he led the U.S. 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 his class. At 17, he was the only teenager selected to train with the U.S. men’s national team as it prepared for the Paris Olympics and looked at ease scoring over some of the NBA’s biggest superstars.

“It was another moment where we’re all looking at each other in the gym shaking our heads,” Flagg’s longtime trainer, Matt Mackenzie, told Yahoo Sports last year. “Every time we put a challenge in front of this kid, he not only rises to the occasion, 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 that selection right away, making an immediate impact with his ball-hawking instincts, his knack for finding open teammates and his ability to finish in transition.

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

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

Since then, Scheyer has figured out creative ways to get his best player mismatches and space to operate. Flagg has also made massive improvements as a shot creator, blowing by bigs off the dribble, bullying his way to the rim against guards and looking for teammates if the defense collapses on him. He has 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 get drafted by her beloved Boston Celtics.

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

Now, with the Celtics contending for the NBA title and Flagg a near shoo-in to go No. 1 overall, that’s no longer a realistic possibility.

Flagg will always draw some inspiration from Larry Bird, but the beneficiary will be some other NBA team.