Capture The Flagg
That was the goal of every NBA team, The former Duke star andpresumptiveTOP DRAFTPICKhas an uncanny skill set that hoops IQ and a preternatural calm
“I love being the underdog,” Flagg says.“Always have. It gives you a littleEXTRA FUEL, extra motivation everygame. You get a spark. It’s a great feeling.”
photograph by CLAY PATRICK MCBRIDE
Sports Illustrated - July 2025
THE SCENE FELT FUNEREAL
In April, minutes after Duke’s collapse in the NCAA semifinal againstHouston, a contingent of Blue Devils motored down a back hall of the Alamodome on a golf cart. Coach Jon Scheyer, flanked by freshman wing Kon Knueppel, was stuffed in the middle row. As the cart hummed down the quiet hallway, Cooper Flagg appeared on the back, still in his sweat-soaked uniform, staring vacantly in the direction he came. The images, captured by dozens of cameraphones, quickly went viral. Flagg can’t recall what he was thinking in that moment. Just that, whatever it was, he didn’t want anyone to know it. “It was an incredible season,” Flagg later told reporters.“Didn’t end the way we wanted to.”
Weeks later Flagg still struggles to explain why. Up six points with 35 seconds left, Duke appeared to have a spot in the national title game locked up. Then a Houston three-pointer sliced the lead in half. A blown inbounds pass led to a dunk that cut it to one. On the next possession, Flagg was whistled for going over the back after theBlue Devils’ Tyrese Proctor missed the front end of a one-and-one. Two free throws at the other end gave the Cougars a one-point lead. With 15 seconds left, Duke put the ball in the hands of Flagg. He drove baseline, spun to the middle, pulled up from nine feet … and missed off the front of the rim. No shot at a national title. No regrets, it should be noted, either. “There’s certain things that I replay fromthat game,” says Scheyer. “That’s not one of them. You trust the ballin Cooper’s hands.”
With good reason. Flagg’s freshman season was an unqualified suc-cess. He averaged 19.2 points per game on 48.1% shooting, including38.5% from three. He was a first-team All-American and the NaismithNational Player of the Year. There were standout moments. A 42-point outburst against Notre Dame. A 20-point, 12-rebound effort againstLouisville, one of his seven double-doubles. Against Houston, Flagg finished with 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists.
And the shot? “Got to a solid spot,” shrugs Flagg. That’s about as deepas he’s willing go. He says he has not rewatched the ending: “That’s just not who I am.” Nor has he tortured himself by what if-ing the finalpossession of his college career. “I’m not going to beat myself up overwhether I could have taken one more dribble or whether I could havedone something different,” says Flagg. “It was a tough shot, but I don’tthink you’re going to get an easy shot in that opportunity. If you look atany game-winner at any level, I don’t think there’s a lot of wide-open [ones]. You get to a spot, you raise up, and you trust the work that youput in over time. I’m just going to live with what I trusted.”
What did trouble Flagg, those who know him say, was the beliefthat he let his teammates down. “He takes responsibility for probablytoo much at times,” says Matt MacKenzie, Flagg’s longtime trainer.“He was in rough shape for a couple of days.”
MacKenzie played college ball at Husson, a Division III school inBangor, Maine. After graduating, he got into coaching, eventuallyfocusing on player development. Around 2019, his phone rang. It wasKelly Flagg. She had a pair of 12-year-old twin boys, Cooper and Ace.And she wanted MacKenzie to work with them.
Cooper’s legend had already been established. Andy Bedard was coaching youth basketball in southern Maine when he began hearing stories about a long-limbed third-grader up north dominating boys several years ahead of him. When he watched him play, Bedardwas stunned by what he saw. Not in the game. In thelayup line. “Some kids that age, they can’t walk andchew gum,” says Bedard. “Cooper’s doing left-handedflip layups, 45-degree angles. He was so coordinated.”When play started, Bedard was struck by Flagg’s feelfor the game. “The way that he was passing the ball to bad players with extra backspin, nice and soft sothey could finish,” says Bedard. “And if a teammate missed, he’d grab the rebound and let them shoot it again. He could dominate. He did dominate. But heplayed the right way.”
By the time Kelly called him, MacKenzie had already heard whispers about the supersized elementary schoolers tearing up the New England basketball circuit. Ace was solid, built like his brother, with amore conventional big man game. Cooper, though, was different. The physical tools were impressive. But itwas his mind that stood out. Show Cooper something once, says MacKenzie, “and you didn’t have to show him again.”
MacKenzie ran him through drills with older kids. Situational stuff. Short shot clock. Pick-and-rolls requiring a quick decision. “His ability to process was oftentimes better than those guys,” says MacKenzie.“And they were playing college basketball.” He was like Will Hunting, with hops. That Duke put the ball inFlagg’s hands in the closing seconds against Houston wasn’t surprising, says MacKenzie. “Cooper,” he says,“is built for those moments.”
Which made coming up short excruciating. Flagg even wondered: Should I try again? Duke was widely viewed as a one-year pit stop on his road to the NBA, where teams pursued him by losing as many games aspossible to maximize draft lottery odds, giving birth to the tagline “Capture the Flagg.”
Yet when it came time to make a decision, Flaggfelt conflicted. “Was it obvious?” he asks, repeating aquestion. “Yes and no. If somebody could tell me that I could have that group of people for another yearand go back and have the exact same team, I woulda hundred percent do it. But it’s just not reality andyou can’t pass up on the opportunity. You just haveto do what’s best for you and move on.”To Dallas, most likely. On lottery night the Mavs—with a 1.8% chance of securing the top overall pick—saw their four-ball combination come up. A team that for months was maligned for offloading one franchise player (Luka Dončić) will get a chance to draft another, a 6' 8", 221-pound wing with limitless potential. The question is: Just how good can Cooper Flagg be?
VIRAL MOMENT against NBAstars:
“Justbasketball.”
“SO WHAT DO you want to talk about?” It’s mid-May and Flaggis standing on the edge of a putting green on the groundsof the Four Seasons in Westlake Village, a leafy city aboutan hour northwest of Los Angeles. He twirls a custom-madeclub, emblazoned with a Duke logo and with his name inscribed onthe inside. Bedard, looking for less physically taxing ways for Flaggto channel his competitiveness, steered him towards golf a few yearsago. The first time they played Bedard spotted him nine strokes. Thelast time he played him straight up. He hasn’t lost yet. But he will.Prodigy is a word often associated with Flagg. He was quarterbackon his youth football team. The pitcher and shortstop in baseball.Striker in soccer. “He’s annoyingly good at everything,” says hismother, Kelly. And he has to win at everything. Ping-pong, corn-hole. He’s been known to cheat at Marco Polo. “He can’t stand tolose,” says Kelly. “I think that’s why he is who he is. He doesn’t doanything halfway.”Kelly didn’t think she’d raise a future top pick. But she guessedshe might breed some basketball talent. A 5' 10" guard, she playedfour seasons at Maine, helping the Black Bears upset Stanford inthe 1999 NCAA tournament. She met Ralph Flagg in high school.Ralph, a burly 6' 9" forward, played at Eastern Maine CommunityCollege. They dated throughout college and got married soon after.In 2004, Kelly gave birth to the couple’s oldest son, Hunter. Twoyears later, they welcomed Cooper and Ace.Cooper took to basketball first. Physically, he could dominate.But it was the mental part of the game that appealed to him. “Beingable to beat people when you’re not more skilled than them by beingsmarter, playing with more IQ,” says Flagg. “That’s what I gravitatedtowards. Things that just make the game so in-depth. There are justso many different ways you can win.”A twin brother—Ace is a minute older—is a lot of things. A con-fidant. A best friend. “Having a twin,” says Cooper, “is the greatestgift.” They also make ideal practice partners. One-on-one gamesin the driveway would go deep into the night. But Cooper’s realrival was Mom. Kelly quit organized basketball after college. Butshe didn’t quit playing. She can’t remember exactly her first gameagainst Cooper. But she never let him win. If he went up for a shot,she blocked it. If he wanted to stop her, he’d have to defend her inthe post. “He’ll beat me when he can beat me,” she told her husband.(Ralph, with little interest in getting injured, rarely joined.) By theend of sixth grade, Cooper had sprouted to six feet. The post-upsstopped working. The last time they played, she tore her meniscus.The rivalry ended there.Cooper’s talent revealed itself early. Kelly recalls a scrimmage infirst grade. On one early possession a loose ball squirted away andwas headed out of bounds. Cooper—age 7—leaped after it, palmingit and saving it to a teammate. He recovered, sprinted the lengthof the floor, got the ball back and finished with a layup. “It was amoment where I think Ralph and I looked at each other and we werekind of like, ‘O.K., that was different,’ ” says Kelly. “You don’t see a7-year-old do stuff like that very often.”The Flaggs were determined to cultivate his talent. Newport is atown of 3,000-ish in central Maine. Cooper needed to get outside ofit. They took the boys to AAU tryouts. Kelly reached out to Bedard, 32 S P O R T S I L L U S T R AT E D • S I . C O Ma college classmate. In Cooper, Bedard saw a kid with the size of aforward and the instincts of a guard. He began developing Flagg’s ballskills. Dribbling drills. Shooting drills. Operating as the ballhandlerin pick-and-rolls. Bedard’s son Kaden, a sturdy, quick-footed guard,played on the team. In practice, Bedard would cone off two-thirdsof the court and make Cooper beat Kaden up the floor.Later, the Flaggs connected with MacKenzie. To the coach, his newcharge’s athleticism was impressive; Flagg was dunking by the sev-enth grade. But Flagg’s spongelike mind, says MacKenzie, was just asmemorable. In car rides, he would study YouTube clips of the 1985–86Celtics. “Basketball being played at its purest form,” says MacKenzie.Flagg didn’t have a favorite player, per se. He just mined piecesfrom them. Kevin Durant and Paolo Banchero. Jayson Tatum andKevin Garnett. Ask MacKenzie for a comp and he offers a scorcher:“I say that he’s got the intensity of Garnett, he’s got the court senseand basketball IQ like Larry Bird, and the versatility and athleti-cism comparable to Tatum. I’m not comparing him directly to thoseguys, but I feel like he’s got a little bit of those players wired into hisapproach as a basketball player.”
By eighth grade, Flagg was pushing 6' 5" andneeded more competition. MacKenzie reached out toBrian Scalabrine, the ex-NBA forward who was trainingteenagers in the Boston area. He told Scalabrine aboutFlagg. Scalabrine, understandably, was skeptical. FromMaine? Heat guard Duncan Robinson is from Maine.Before that, you have to go back 41 years (Jeff Turner)to find a Mainer who was drafted. “He told me he’s gotsome 13-year-old beating up on 20-somethings,” recallsScalabrine. “I told him, ‘No f---ing way.’ I thought itwas just a trainer being a trainer.”
Still, Scalabrine invited Flagg down for a workout.He told his regulars—all high school upperclassmenor older—that a kid from Maine was coming down“to bust y’all’s ass.” At first glance, Flagg didn’t lookimpressive. “Long arms,” says Scalabrine. “Like theygrew and the rest of him didn’t.” Flagg didn’t saymuch, either. Scalabrine threw him into a game. On the first play, Flagg drove right, jump-stopped, faked with his right hand before elevating and dunking withhis left. “And the gym went silent,” says Scalabrine.“Everybody just stopped.”
Scalabrine ran Flagg through drills. Eight-secondshot clock, player can hold the ball for two seconds.“Try to speed them up,” Scalabrine says. “Gets sloppyreal fast.” Flagg, says Scalabrine, was the best playeron the floor. He showed him a Kyrie Irving drill, whereplayers must make a dozen different versions of alayup. Right leg, left hand. Left leg, right hand. And so on. A total of 128 makes. A fast time for the drill is around three minutes. Flagg finished in just over two.
“He’s a supercomputer,” says Scalabrine. “Whatever you tell him, he’ll master in 24 hours. Just picture thatfor one second. Think about the trajectory of a player thatyou could tell something one day and he figures it outthe next. Chris Paul, LeBron James, those are the guyswith minds like that. He’s as smart as any player I’ve ever been around. His basketball IQ is off the charts.”
YOU’VE PROBABLY seen the video. Last summer, Flaggearned an invite to Las Vegas to take part in Team USA’straining camp before the Paris Olympics as a member ofthe select team. Flagg was fresh off his final season atMontverde Academy; looking for better competition, he and Ace,who will play this fall at Maine, transferred after their freshman yearof high school to the Florida hoops hotbed. Cooper was 17 and lessthan two months away from starting classes at Duke. On the firstday he felt something unfamiliar: nerves. “I was shell-shocked,” hesays. Sharing a floor with LeBron and Stephen Curry will do that.
By the second day, Flagg had settled in. He relished the level ofcompetition. Best against the best, he told friends. During a scrimmage, Flagg bounced off a screen and faced off against Anthony Davis. Hetook two dribbles before knocking down a three. On his team’s nextpossession, Flagg crashed the glass to put back an errant three-pointattempt, drawing a foul. “He put on a show,” says Scheyer.
Flagg, unsurprisingly, shrugs off the sequence. “Just basketball,”he says. But he doesn’t undersell the experience. “You get to be in that environment and when you play well, you hold your own, it builds confidence,” says Flagg. “I mean, it tells you, What can you not do? Who can you not play against at that point?”
That Flagg met that moment wasn’t surprising. In2020, Kelly and Bedard cofounded Maine United, an AAU team. It wasn’t the deepest roster. “If Vegas saw usin the layup line, they’d be like, ‘Oh my God, you guysare going to lose by 30,’” says Bedard. But they had Acein the paint, Kaden on the perimeter and Cooper every-where else. “We didn’t look like much,” says Bedard. “Butwe had the best player in the nation in our age group.”
Maine United took Cooper national. Tournaments inPhiladelphia, Baltimore and Orlando. The Peach Jam, a Nike-sponsored event in South Carolina for top highschool players. Everyone had heard of this gangly white kid from the middle of nowhere. And just asmany were eager to test him. Ralph recalls a trip toMassachusetts. Regional tournament, semifinal game.Cooper was in fifth or sixth grade. The opposing team came out face-guarding Cooper to try to deny himthe ball. He scored 25 in the first half. “Pretty good,”says Ralph. “Especially when the other team has 15.”
Everyone has a similar story. Kelly remembers atournament in New Jersey. In a close game, Cooperstarted sluggishly. An overrated chant bubbled up in thestands. “That’s a trigger for him,” says Kelly. Cooper scored the next eight points to blow the game open.
That’s the thing with Flagg—he lives for challenges. Montverde is a famed prep powerhouse. Joel Embiid, Cade Cunningham and Ben Simmons are among the NBA stars who have passed through. Montverde went 56–3 in Flagg’s two seasons. It’s fun to win asa favorite. Ask Flagg, though, and he’ll tell you thatproving a bunch of Maine kids could play meant more.“I love being the underdog,” he says. “Always have.It gives you a little extra fuel, extra motivation everygame. You get a spark. It’s a great feeling.”
“I love being the underdog,” Flagg says.
“Always have. It gives you a little EXTRA FUEL,
extra motivation every game.
You get a spark. It’s a great feeling.”
BACK IN MAY, inside a sealed conference room in Chicago,Matt Riccardi tapped his leg anxiously. A year ago theMavericks were in the NBA Finals. Now Riccardi, the team’s assistant GM, was sequestered in the draft lottery drawing room, representing the franchise on the off chance its ping-pong ball combination came up.
Of the 1,001 possible combinations, Dallas owned 18 of them. Therewas no reason to be hopeful—only three teams in the 40-year historyof the lottery had won with longer odds. The first ball sucked out ofthe air-powered machine was 10, one of Dallas’s numbers. Riccardinodded. The next, 14. Getting interesting, Riccardi thought. When 11was pulled Riccardi’s knee bounced off the leg of Andrae Patterson, theTrail Blazers’ representative seated alongside him. He glanced down atan owl sticker he brought into the room, a good luck charm provided byhis 13-month-old son, Lio. The last ball, a 7, confirmed Dallas’s win. Helooked back at the sticker. “Lio,” says Riccardi, “got us Cooper Flagg.”
One floor up, in a packed ballroom, there was an audible roar whenDallas’s envelope was revealed. Rolando Blackman, the ex-Mavsstar representing the team on thedais, clapped furiously. Rick Welts, Dallas’s CEO, looked on in disbelief. From a front row seat, Flagg clapped politely. He was surprisedby the speed of the lottery. “I didn’t realize it was like, 15 minutes and the whole show was over,” says Flagg.He insists he didn’t have a preferred destination, and while it’s nice togo to a team built to win (the roster includes Davis and Irving, who is expected to miss a chunk of next sea-son with a torn ACL), it won’t change his approach when he gets there.“
For me, it didn’t really matterwhat team I went to,” says Flagg.“Whatever team I get picked by orwhatever situation I ended up in, my mindset going into any game oranytime I’m playing basketball is always try to win. I’m just an ulti-mate competitor and this is what I would try to do anywhere I went.”
As for the Mavs, well, ask him later. He isn’t ready to dive deepinto his fit in Dallas. Not out of concern that the Mavericks won’ttake him—they most assuredly will—but because he is determinedto live in the moment. Questions about playing alongside Davis orthe inevitable talk of replacing Dončić are coming. For Flagg, theycan wait. “I think the biggest thing is ... not trying to think too far into the future, not worrying about what’s coming down the road, but just focusing on right here, right now, on what I can control and just making most out of every single day,” he says.
Days that will get better. After a recent workout, Scalabrine pulled Flagg aside and told him, “I can’t help you anymore.” Says Scalabrine,“He’s past me. Everything he needs to know he needs to learn fromsomebody else. He needs to be working with LeBron or something. He’s beyond me.” After that the two went back to work. The NBAwill be there. There was more to be done.
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