‘There’s disbelief about him because he’s just that good’: Inside Cooper Flagg’s improbable rise

IN THE FOURTH row of bleachers inside a gymnasium on the UNLV campus, Duke men’s basketball officials — including coach Jon Scheyer — are struggling to contain their excitement.

In the row just ahead of them, Kelly and Ralph Flagg look on in awe as their 17-year-old son Cooper is dominating a scrimmage against the best basketball players in the world.

It’s July 8, and 6-foot-9 Cooper Flagg is playing for the USA Select Team, a squad of mostly NBA players who, in the spirit of tradition, serve as a training camp appetizer for Team USA before the Olympics. But Flagg is not an NBA player. He is the first collegiate player in a decade to join the select team, but he isn’t a collegiate player either — not yet anyway.

Flagg is four months removed from leading the Florida-based Montverde Academy boys’ basketball team to its eighth national championship, and he is four months away from his debut at Duke University. In this interregnum, Flagg is five years younger than Team USA’s youngest player, Minnesota star guard Anthony Edwards, and he is four years younger than LeBron James’ NBA career (21). And he is playing against them both, along with Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis and a who’s who of NBA stars who, a month later, will claim a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.

For now, Team USA is caught in the fourth quarter of a neck-and-neck scrimmage against the select team, led by Flagg, who, quite simply, is putting on a show. He drills a corner 3 against a closing Davis, who hangs his head in frustration. He sinks a turnaround jumper over Boston’s Jrue Holiday, one of the game’s best defenders. He crosses over Davis and swishes a side-step 3-pointer from the right wing, igniting a sequence that’s about to burn lava-hot across social media.

After the swish, Team USA turns the ball over, and Flagg finds a teammate for an open 3-pointer. As the shot goes up, Flagg anticipates the miss, sprints toward the rim, leaps and finishes the midair putback while being fouled by Bam Adebayo, giving his team a 69-68 lead with two minutes left. He has six points in 20 seconds.

On the sideline, his USA Select teammates erupt from their seats. Around the gym, media, NBA officials and Team USA officials collectively turn to the person next to them to reaffirm that what they’re seeing isn’t a mirage.

Team USA holds on to win by one, and Flagg finishes with 17 points on 6-of-10 shooting, including 2-of-3 from 3-point range, plus 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and 1 turnover. James taps Flagg on the butt while a medical official tends to a Z-shaped gash in Flagg’s right arm. “He looks like a hell of a player,” Suns star Kevin Durant, who missed the scrimmage because of a calf injury, said afterward. “He’s 17 years old coming in here playing like a [veteran] almost. No emotion. Just going out there and doing his job. That’s a good sign.”

Team USA officials grow even more excited about the prospect of Flagg being a foundational piece of their future. “He checks so many boxes, it’s scary,” Sean Ford, the USA men’s national team director, told ESPN.

Flagg is projected as the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, but one Western Conference scout told ESPN, “He would have been the first pick in the 2024 draft as well.”

After the scrimmage, Flagg is mobbed by reporters. He says it’s an honor to play against Team USA. He calls them incredible talents.

“They were just playing good team basketball, playing the right way, moving the ball and just picking their spots,” Flagg says, a simple quote that, in reality, serves as a window into ideals that are marrow-deep for him.

Before the scrimmage, Kelly, Ralph and Matt MacKenzie, Cooper’s trainer, weren’t sure how Cooper would play. They did know he had long excelled against players far older. As a third grader, he faced sixth graders. As a sixth grader, he faced former college players. As an eighth grader, he faced current college players. He received his first college scholarship offer before entering high school. He dominated across Maine, then New England, then along the East Coast, then nationally, then even for the USA junior national team in Spain. But as word spread, it was often met with skepticism. Only one Maine-born player had ever been drafted into the NBA — and that was in 1984. A white American player hasn’t been drafted first overall since Kent Benson in 1977.

The superlative ways in which Flagg’s game is described, even by him and those closest to him, matches a long-held trope of white NBA players — that he “plays the right way,” “makes the right play,” “plays the team game.” In conversations with people across the basketball landscape, including with talent evaluators at the highest level of the game, it’s clear Flagg’s game transcends those characterizations.

Still, disbelief over his rise has followed Flagg, about his age, his race, the small town he’s from. At every stop — private trainers, legendary coaches, scrimmages, national tournaments — he has faced test after test against older players, bigger players, all designed to define a ceiling, a future, whether he belonged. For the past decade, he has passed them all, consistently turning skepticism into awe — fueled by lessons from one of the greatest NBA teams of all time.

“There’s disbelief about him because he’s just that good,” one Western Conference executive said.

Back in Las Vegas, as Kelly, Ralph and Matt MacKenzie leave UNLV, with Cooper Flagg trending nationally across social media, they know something has changed: that there has been a collective realization about how good their son really is. “We have lived by the philosophy that if you’re the best player in the gym, you got to find a new gym,” Kelly Flagg told ESPN.

Then, they laugh. For as surreal as it all seems, it also feels normal.

“It’s been this way,” Kelly said, “his entire life.”

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ON A LATE October morning, Earl Anderson idles in his pickup truck outside a two-story home in Newport, Maine. Autumn has painted the lawn with a coat of sunset-colored leaves that shimmer from an overnight rain. The home is a light brown, wood-framed farmhouse, with a two-car garage and a curving, paved driveway, where a metal pole rises from the earth on one side. Atop the stand, for years, stood a backboard and a rim, but they are gone. “I wonder what happened to them,” Anderson says. He shrugs.

This, he says, is where Flagg grew up.

Then Anderson drives the 3.1 miles up a thoroughfare known as “Moosehead Trail” toward Nokomis Regional High School, where he coached Flagg his freshman season. Students fill the hallway as Anderson enters the gymnasium. On a far wall, a state championship banner from that season is displayed; not far from it, another banner honors Flagg being named the Maine Gatorade Player of the Year. In a trophy case outside, the Gold Ball that the team won shimmers under the light, next to the game ball from the title-clinching game.

“I had never seen anyone like that,” Anderson said, “including in college basketball. And he was only 15.”

It’s high praise from Anderson, who has coached basketball in Maine for more than four decades, and it’s more remarkable still, he said, when considering Flagg and his family are from a town with a population of about 3,200, about 25 miles west of Bangor along I-95, the key ribbon of interstate bisecting the state.

Newport is small enough that Kelly likes to joke that you could blink and miss it. “It’s a place for people who are on their way to somewhere else,” Anderson said.

In a house 3 miles away from the one where she would one day raise Flagg, Kelly fell in love with the game. She was 7, and shot on a backyard basket affixed to a shed by her father, Dan Bowman, who rebounded for her; they played so often that the backyard grass faded into dirt, and he’d park a car nearby and turn on the headlights so they could play into the night. Dan was a multisport athlete who played baseball, soccer and was a 6-foot-3 sharpshooter in basketball.

And when he wanted to instill deeper lessons about the game, he turned to the Boston Celtics.

Dan grew up a die-hard, and the family spent Sundays in the 1980s crowded around the living room box-set television, turning down the volume and turning up the radio so they could hear Celtics broadcaster Johnny Most narrate the action. “Those are my first memories,” Kelly said. A life-size poster of Larry Bird hung in the family kitchen. She developed an up-and-under move like Kevin McHale.

And the 1985-86 team: six future Hall of Famers in Bird, McHale, Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson, reserve Bill Walton (the NBA Sixth Man of the Year that season) and head coach K.C. Jones, who had won eight titles with the team as a guard during Bill Russell’s heydey.

Those Celtics finished 50-1 at home — 10-0 during the playoffs and an NBA-record 40-1 during the regular season. They posted a 67-15 record and crushed Houston for the Celtics’ 16th NBA title. They were 19-2 against teams with 50 or more wins and had a 20.3 average scoring margin in series-clinching games. Bird won his third straight MVP and second Finals MVP.

Kelly was spellbound. They led the NBA in rebounding and 3-point field-goal percentage and ranked second in field goal percentage and assists. YouTube clips are devoted to their passing prowess — the ball rarely hitting the floor, players constantly giving up good shots for great shots.

“That was the most pure form of the game in my mind,” Kelly said. And it framed her worldview about how to play it. Like her father, she attended Nokomis, where she became one of the state’s best players. She then starred at the University of Maine, which upset Stanford in the 1999 NCAA tournament during her senior season.

After college, the 5-foot-10 Kelly walked into a block-shaped armory built in 1941 and spotted Ralph Flagg, who was a few years older, 6-9 and, Kelly thought, rather cute. He, too, had attended Nokomis before going on to play at Eastern Maine Community College.

Soon after, they started dating. When they played against each other, he couldn’t stop her up-and-under move. “She was pretty deadly with that,” Ralph said. “And a fierce competitor.”

As a wedding present, they received a flowering crabapple tree, and they planted it right next to the driveway, where they soon erected a basketball hoop. They started a family — all boys, first Hunter, then twins, Ace and Cooper.

Kelly coached the Nokomis varsity girls team, and her boys grew up in the gym. At 5 years old, Flagg and Ace — each about a foot taller than other boys their age — executed basketball drills. When Flagg was in second grade, Kelly and Ralph petitioned for Flagg to play on a recreation team in Newport, and he joined, soon playing against third and fourth graders. In his first game, Kelly recalled, Flagg scored more than 20 points and grabbed more than 15 rebounds. He soon started playing against fifth and sixth graders.

In third grade, just before Christmas, Kelly and Ralph bought DVDs of the 1985-86 Celtics. Flagg would lie on the living room floor in front of the TV and watch the games on a loop, one full game after another. They later saw him looking up YouTube highlights, and they bought more DVDs — on Larry Bird, on Bird versus Magic Johnson. “Did we want that to influence the way my kids learned the game and saw the game?” Kelly asked. “Absolutely.” Kelly and Ralph would point out how Bird was the star and could score whenever he wanted, but look how he dove for loose balls, set concrete screens, found open teammates.

Flagg would nod along, playing the DVDs one after another, hour after hour.

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SOME SEVEN YEARS ago, Andy Bedard stepped inside the YMCA gym in New Gloucester, Maine. Bedard was Maine basketball royalty, leading his high school to a state title, then playing at Boston College and the University of Maine. He knew Kelly, and she had told him Flagg was developing fast.

Bedard, who was putting together a traveling team in Portland, Maine, decided to see for himself.

Inside the gym, Bedard was struck by how advanced the 10-year-old Flagg seemed — how he could put spin on the ball when executing a layup so it bounced off the backboard just so, or how he’d add some spin on a bounce pass to slow the ball down so a teammate could catch up. There were little nuances that seemed advanced for a fourth grader.

By then, Flagg was playing all the time.

He’d ask his mom to unlock a nearby gym for him. In the winters, Ralph snowblowed the driveway or Flagg shoveled it himself. Kelly and Ralph watched from a window as Hunter, Flagg and Ace played, giving it 30 minutes — tops — before one of them punted the ball and charged into the house, slamming the door, furious. “Someone was always bleeding,” Kelly said.

Flagg and his mom played one-on-one in the driveway, and she dominated. “She never let him win,” said Camryn King, a childhood friend. As Flagg grew older, she struggled to beat him. “The last time we played was fifth grade,” Flagg said, “and it was the first time I was up — 7-6 — and then she tore a meniscus in the driveway, so then we never got to play again.”

Kelly is proud that she still boasts an undefeated record against her son, but she could see the same fire burning within him. “He gets that from me,” she said.

Bedard started coaching Flagg, and, soon, they were playing teams across New England. Bedard coached, Kelly served as an assistant coach, and they both agreed on their philosophy: They would preach team basketball. “The backbone of who we were, our identity and how we played, came from that,” Bedard said.

Soon, Ralph and Kelly were driving their boys an hour-and-a-half to Portland, Maine, for practices several days a week. Flagg would lie down in the backseat, his face cupped in his hands, watching those Celtics DVDs.

“That was our go-to watch the entire drive,” Ace said.

By sixth grade, Kelly, believing Flagg needed more advanced training, reached out to Matt MacKenzie, a former wing at Husson University in Bangor who had become a private trainer. At his Bangor half-court gym, MacKenzie began working with Flagg three times a week, showing him footwork drills, how to play through contact, how to play between the mid-post to the 3-point line. But MacKenzie soon realized Flagg already knew most of those concepts. “He was much further along than high school players, even college players,” MacKenzie said.

He was 11 years old.

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FLAGG WAS RETURNING to the gym night after night to shoot 500 additional shots. MacKenzie knew another test was needed.

So he reached out to a friend, Ja’Shonté Wright-McLeish, a 6-4 sophomore guard at the University of Maine.

MacKenzie told him he had a young player — a 6-foot-6 eighth grader — whom he wanted him to play. Wright-McLeish was skeptical, but he figured he’d help MacKenzie as a favor. MacKenzie provided a directive: Don’t take it easy on the kid. Go hard. Be physical. Bully him.

In their first game, Wright-McLeish did just that. He stripped the ball. He blocked Flagg’s shot. He initiated contact. “I played a little dirty,” Wright-McLeish told ESPN. Flagg departed the Bangor gym, fuming. “He came back a couple days later,” MacKenzie said, “and he looked at me and he goes, ‘That’s never going to happen again.'”

Flagg and Wright-McLeish faced off again — and it wasn’t close.

“He was very mature and willing to learn,” Wright McLeish said of his first impression of Flagg. “Also, that for his age, he has the size and length to be a problem wherever he goes in the future.”

Soon after, in the fall before Flagg began his freshman year of high school, MacKenzie called a former NBA player he knew, Brian Scalabrine, a 6-9 forward who played 11 seasons in the league and won a 2008 title with the Celtics.

They talked regularly about young players in the area. Scalabrine had begun coaching his own kids and was tied into the hoops scene in Boston. There, Scalabrine ran an intense pickup game, featuring local AAU players and others who were about to join the college ranks. It was a “nasty” environment, Scalabrine said. Physical play. Tons of trash-talking. Scalabrine had been retired from the league for several years, but he still played, too.

MacKenzie told Scalabrine about Flagg, who, at 13 years old, was now getting the upper hand of college players in local workouts.

Scalabrine was skeptical. He knew trainers often talked up the players they worked with. “Get the f— out of here,” Scalabrine said. “Ain’t no way.” But he liked MacKenzie and thought he was a straight shooter.

“Bring him down here,” Scalabrine said. “I’ll get him into the gym to play against some of Boston’s best.”

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IN THE BOSTON gym, Scalabrine warned his players about a 13-year-old coming in from Maine.

“He’s going to destroy you guys,” Scalabrine boomed.

Flagg walked in the gym after a four-hour drive, and on the game’s first play, found himself trapped with the ball at the free throw line, a defender draped over him. He pump-faked, threw the ball toward the backboard, took two steps, jumped, caught the ball and thundered a dunk with his left hand. The gym fell silent.

“I got something for your ass today!” Scalabrine screamed at his charges.

It was just one play, but it piqued the curiosity of the other players of what more he could do. Scalabrine felt the same. And Flagg soon showed them. In one instance, he threw a 75-foot crosscourt seam pass to the opposite corner that arrived at the exact same time as his teammate’s feet. Scalabrine laughed. His pass timing, Scalabrine later said, reminded him of LeBron James.

Scalabrine ran Flagg through the “eight-second game” — a full-court game with eight seconds on the shot clock. It is a grueling exercise, forcing players to make quick decisions with little time. On a good day, a player’s team might win a game or two. But Flagg won again and again. “He … f—ing … dominated,” Scalabrine said, emphasizing each word.

They spent two hours in the gym that night, and Scalabrine told Flagg he was going to be in the NBA. He believed he’d play in the league for 10 years. Would he be a Hall of Famer? An All-Star? “That’s up to you and how hard you want to work,” Scalabrine told him. “But I know for a fact that you’re an NBA player.”

Despite his age, Scalabrine — mirroring Flagg’s coaches through the years — noticed Flagg’s advanced timing on blocking shots, how he’d disrupt passing lanes, how he possessed a rapid first and second jump for rebounds. On offense, he saw his deft passing and his versatile ability to score from midrange and around the rim. At 13, he’d established a rare two-way game.

Sources across the basketball world began to agree, despite a narrative that persists about white players and the stereotypes around their play and attributes — that they make up for a perceived lack of athletic ability in other ways.

Flagg would prove this long-standing trope to be shallow and inaccurate, one Eastern Conference executive said.

“It’s an interesting narrative because it will inevitably be racially tinged. ‘This is the great white hope that knows how to play the right way, and all these other Black players are playing selfishly,'” the exec said about how Flagg’s coverage might play out in the media. “I know there will be commentary on that.”

“Europeans are white and they’ve been balling for years,” said another Western Conference executive. “I guess it’s just we haven’t seen an American-born white dude projected this high in a while. Chet [Holmgren] is pretty damn good, though. He’s probably the best American-born white dude in the league at the moment. I don’t recall it ever getting brought up much with him, for what it’s worth — and he had some buzz going No. 1. Just not as much as Cooper.”

The exec continued, calling Flagg a “fantastic talent” and said he conjures thoughts of Kevin Garnett and Anthony Davis with his ability to block shots and switch on defense. Flagg, he said, would instantly become one of the best two-way players in the NBA.

“He does have very good handles for a power forward,” the executive said. “Good footwork, and he plays his ass off. There’s no question he’s going to be a good player in the NBA, but the question is how good.”

Said another Eastern Conference executive, “I have heard very little doubt about the kid. Everyone around Cooper has raved about him for three years.”

Months later, Scalabrine ran Flagg through a drill that Dallas Mavericks star guard Kyrie Irving employs at the end of workouts — often known as the “Kyrie finishing drill.”

Irving completes a series of challenging acrobatic shots around the rim from different angles, jumping off one foot, or the other, or both, aiming high and low off the backboard, spinning the ball in different ways. The drill helps explain why Irving is such a master around the basket, able to finish in traffic and off either foot and with either hand. But it is an exhausting drill, requiring about 120 made shots in a short amount of time. The first time Flagg tried it, he completed it in about five minutes. The next time, Scalabrine believed Flagg could complete it in just under five minutes.

He completed the drill in 2 minutes and 17 seconds.

“His learning curve is like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Scalabrine said. “Now, I haven’t been around every single high school player growing up, but I’m telling you — there’s not a challenge that he’s not going to be able to overcome.”

Scalabrine called Ford, the USA men’s national team director.

“Sean, I’m just telling you,” Scalabrine said. “We don’t know each other, but he’s a unicorn.”

Ford has taken these types of calls over the years. Sometimes they pan out, like the time he got a call about a teenager named LeBron James. But in many instances, they don’t. Ford listened and did a quick search on his phone. Flagg seemed legitimate, but he was so young, 13 years old. Ford reached Kelly and said that Team USA would have a minicamp for the junior national team in the spring of 2022 and that maybe there would be an opportunity for Flagg to attend.

Ford knew Maine wasn’t necessarily a hotbed for basketball talent. But Scalabrine seemed so sure, so emphatic.

Still, Ford wondered, how good was Cooper Flagg, really?

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AS ANDERSON DRIVES through Newport, he looks ahead and reveals what basketball means to his state.

“It’s what binds these communities together,” he says.

When people think of Maine, he said, they don’t think of basketball; they think of hockey. But not every school has an ice rink. They’re expensive, require extensive upkeep. Basketball, on the contrary, is cheap. All you need is a ball, a hoop and some sneakers. And when winter in Maine rolls around, and people are isolated, one of the few ways they can form a sense of community is to gather in a heated gym and watch their kids play.

Regional high schools are fed by nearby local towns — Nokomis Regional High School is fed by eight others — and when the state tournament rolls around and teams vie for a chance at the coveted Gold Ball, the towns travel en masse to watch their teams play; the last one to leave being expected to turn out the lights, as the saying goes. Locals compare it to Hoosier Hysteria in Indiana, only without the hype.

For as beloved as basketball is, the state hasn’t produced a ton of top-tier talent. It’s been 40 years since the Nets drafted Maine-born Jeff Turner 17th overall in 1984.

When Flagg joined 650-student Nokomis for his freshman year, his legend in the area was well known, and his new teammates — including his older brother, Hunter — were eager to have him and Ace aboard after struggling for several years. “He was playing with a bunch of seniors, and you could clearly tell that he was the player they looked up to,” Anderson said. Anderson, the coach, had known the family for years. He’d watched Kelly’s father, Dan, play. He’d watched Kelly play. He had heard about Flagg, but he’d never seen him in person — until November practices began.

There were times when Anderson would watch him and think of Larry Bird. It was a touchy subject for people who had grown up with those Celtics teams, who worshiped Bird, and who were loath to bestow such praise on anyone else. But he was the player they often came back to, and Anderson saw parallels in their story. Bird’s hometown of French Lick, Indiana, was small; so was Newport. They were both 6-9. They impacted the game on both ends. They’re obviously both white.

Flagg had a Fathead poster of Bird in his living room, which had been painted green and white. People knew of Flagg’s appreciation of Bird, and Ralph would hear snickers on social media from people saying, “Oh, Flagg never saw Larry Bird play.” It made Ralph laugh. “That’s all we watched — constantly,” he said.

Before the season, Kelly had told Anderson that the hype around her son was growing, and that the attention would be high. Anderson soon saw it himself. Every gym they played in was packed. Lines formed around the block for autographs. Newspapers published feature stories. College coaches — including UCLA — rang Anderson with interest. Nokomis rolled to a 21-1 record. Flagg averaged 20.5 points, 10.0 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals and 3.7 blocks. In the state championship game in March 2022, he scored 22 points and grabbed 16 rebounds in a 43-27 win and raised the Gold Ball afterward. He became the first freshman to be named the Maine Gatorade Player of the Year.

The following month, Flagg traveled to New Orleans for USA Basketball men’s junior national team’s three-day minicamp in New Orleans. The team met in the Pelicans’ practice facility, and Ford looked on, curious about Flagg, who was the youngest player there.

Bedard was present for the minicamp too. There were 46 players in the gym. Bedard reported back to Kelly, Ralph and MacKenzie after the first day that Flagg was the best one there. Ford agreed. Flagg was selected as one of 12 players to represent Team USA at the 2022 FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup in Spain in July 2022. Again he dominated, averaging 9.3 points, a team-high 10 rebounds, 2.9 blocks and 2.4 steals. In the gold-medal-clinching game, he tallied 10 points, 17 rebounds, eight steals and four blocks. “He was so, so good,” Ford said. He was named to the all-tournament team. He was 15 years old.

After his freshman season, Flagg and his brother Ace made the decision to level up again, this time by transferring to Montverde, the Florida-based private prep powerhouse that has produced 11 first-round NBA draft picks in the past decade, including four in 2021.

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AT MONTVERDE, FLAGG played under Kevin Boyle, who had coached a slew of future NBA players — Kyrie Irving, Cade Cunningham, Ben Simmons — and knew that Flagg entered Monteverde as a top prep prospect on a team flush with them. “He’s the best kid in the country, and there were a lot of times he was our third-leading scorer,” Boyle told ESPN.

In 17.8 minutes per game, Flagg averaged 9.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, three assists, a team-high 2.2 blocks and a team-high 1.6 steals in his first season.

In early July 2023, Flagg traveled to North Augusta, South Carolina, and rejoined his AAU team led by Bedard and Kelly — named Maine United — for Nike’s EYBL Peach Jam tournament. The event was held in a 120,000-square-foot facility 6 miles from the Augusta National Golf Club, with NCAA coaches in attendance, including Scheyer. Scalabrine had reached out to Scheyer after the pickup game outside Boston.

“He’s as good as any high school player that I’ve ever seen,” Scalabrine told him. “I know it sounds crazy, but you’ve got to recruit this guy. He’d be a perfect fit for Duke.”

Scheyer had never recruited anyone from Maine. But a year later, he was watching Flagg in person. “I remember the court, I remember where I was sitting,” Scheyer told ESPN. “And here’s this kid, blocking everything. Some of the plays he was making at 15, it just jumped off the page at you. His instincts. His athletic ability. His skill.” He tried to think of a comparison, but couldn’t.

“He’s different from anybody I’ve ever recruited,” Scheyer said.

On the first day of the tournament, Flagg wasn’t shooting well, and an opposing coach quipped about it. After assisting on three straight plays, he looked at the opposing coach. “I don’t need to score,” he said. “All I need to do is win.”

His team won — and continued to win, as Flagg, averaged 25.4 points, 13 rebounds, 5.7 assists, and 6.9 blocks in seven games. He posted triple-doubles in three straight games. In one, he tallied 38 points, 16 rebounds, 12 blocks and six assists. In another, he notched 37 points, 12 rebounds, 10 blocks and six assists. The more they won, the more the crowds swelled. LeBron James pulled Flagg aside. Carmelo Anthony attended several games. Chris Paul approached Maine United’s coaches and told them how much he was loving the team’s run. He’d been watching their games on his phone, he said. “I love the way you all play,” Paul told them. He said he was teaching his son, Chris Jr., then a middle school player, to model how he played after them. He asked if he could meet Flagg and Ace, and, of course, they obliged.

It was a busy summer — with Flagg also attending Stephen Curry’s basketball camp in San Francisco and Jayson Tatum’s camp in St. Louis. In August 2023, Flagg reclassified to the 2025 draft class, fast-tracking his path to the NBA.

NBA talent evaluators were intrigued, noting his 7-foot wingspan, uncanny timing on blocking shots and abilities on both ends — though some have said his shooting mechanics need work. “He’s probably going to need to improve considerably as a shooter, which, given his age, could very realistically happen,” one Eastern Conference executive said. “But even without progress on his shooting or individual offensive game, he will be an NBA starter and have a huge impact on winning in the league. He’s a guy every team would love to have. That part is a very easy projection.”

In October 2023, Flagg announced via Slam Magazine that he would be attending Duke, choosing it over UConn.

Earlier that summer, MacKenzie and Flagg had traveled to Durham, North Carolina, for a two-day unofficial visit. On campus, former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski welcomed them into his spacious office. He showed them his Olympic gold medals and other achievements from his illustrious coaching career. They talked for about an hour, the 16-year-old Flagg remaining stoic and composed. Toward the end, Krzyzewski told him, “The way you carry yourself is very impressive. You remind me of a player I coached on Team USA, and that’s LeBron James.” Flagg nodded politely but said little else. “He’s not somebody who gets starstruck by any means,” MacKenzie said. “I’ve never seen him in a situation where he’s rattled or starstruck.”

Sitting in his office at the Eastern Maine Sports Academy, MacKenzie shows a photo of himself, Flagg and Krzyzewski from that visit. On an opposite wall hangs a framed Bird jersey and a section of the high school floor that Bird played on in French Lick.

Bird had inspired MacKenzie, just as Bird had inspired Flagg. MacKenzie thinks about how Flagg is inspiring others in Maine. He is working with a 6-8 player who idolizes Flagg. “He just turned 15,” he said.

MacKenzie walks toward the court, standing before a space that they plan to transform with mementos from Flagg’s rise and whatever follows, wherever his career may lead.

“I want the kids to come and see what’s possible,” he said.

He imagined the future.

“I can’t wait to see what basketball looks like in Maine in 20 years.”

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A FEW DAYS later, MacKenzie stands next to Kelly and Ralph at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, North Carolina, to watch Flagg play his first regular-season game as a member of the Duke Blue Devils.

It’s 6:15 p.m. on Nov. 4, and Flagg is warming up alongside his teammates. He looks down the court, and a wave of childhood memories comes rushing back.

Duke is hosting the University of Maine. Flagg grew up making the 30-minute trek with his family to watch the Black Bears play in Bangor. He became a fan and even envisioned himself playing there.

Now, he’s standing on the opposite end of the court with his Blue Devils teammates, beneath banners honoring the school’s iconic history and players, deep tournament runs and five national championships.

Duke warms up in front of the visitors bench, and behind it, dozens of Maine fans and alumni who made the trek from Bangor to Durham stand in Black Bears shirts and sweaters and hats, snapping photos and videos of Flagg, one of their own. Flagg’s twin brother, Ace, who plays at nearby Greensboro Day, a prep school, is among them; the week before, Ace committed to play basketball at Maine next season.

On the opposite end of the court, two rows behind the Duke bench, Kelly wears a blue Duke sweater and seems to recognize a familiar face with every passing minute: someone from her alma mater, or someone who had traveled from Maine. She shakes as many hands and delivers as many hugs as a presidential candidate, beaming the whole time.

When the game begins, she removes her sweater, revealing a T-shirt featuring Flagg’s likeness. It shows an image of him in a commercial with New Balance, which signed him in August and has multiple factories in Maine. Ralph, sitting next to Kelly, wears the same shirt, as does MacKenzie, who sits beside Ralph.

Maine plays tough early on but is clearly overmatched by Duke, which, along with Flagg, features two other players — forward Kon Knueppel and center Khaman Maluach — projected as lottery picks in the 2025 NBA draft. Flagg assists on two of Duke’s first three baskets but doesn’t make his first shot until finishing a driving layup with 6:25 left before halftime.

A sellout crowd looks on, eager for a highlight. With 3:25 before halftime, he provides one. Flagg catches the ball on the right wing, receives a screen from a teammate, then explodes down the lane for a thunderous one-handed slam.

Duke jumps out to a 17-point lead in the first half and, despite spirited runs by Maine to keep the game close, expands the margin to 29 in the second. Duke’s defense defines the contest, as the Blue Devils hold Maine to 25% shooting after halftime. In his debut, Flagg finishes with 18 points, a team-high seven rebounds, a team-high five assists and three steals in nearly 30 minutes. Duke wins 96-62.

In the locker room, Flagg sits in his jersey, with a Gatorade towel over his legs — he recently became the first men’s college basketball player to sign with the brand — as reporters surround him. He is asked about impacting the game even though he shot 6-of-15 from the field.

“It’s kind of just something that’s always been a part of my game,” Flagg said. “It’s just trying to impact it in a lot of different ways.”

Maine coach Chris Markwood praises the hometown son after the loss.

“It’s an amazing story,” he said. “If you knew where he was from, how small of a town it is. … It’s a storybook thing that’s going on right now. And the whole state is fully behind him, excited for him, rooting for him.”

After speaking to reporters, Flagg departs the locker room and returns to the court, still in his jersey. It’s 9:30 p.m. now. The stands are empty, and arena officials have already swept and cleaned. But a crowd of 30 remains — friends and family from Maine.

There is Kelly, Ralph, Ace, MacKenzie and others who made the trip. People hug Flagg, shake hands, chat and linger.

MacKenzie’s 5-year-old daughter, Lennie, bounds toward him, wearing the New Balance shirt featuring Flagg’s likeness, and he picks her up. She wants to race him to the baseline, she says.

He happily agrees. They begin, and she takes off, full speed. As she nears the baseline, he slows down, letting her win. She throws both hands in the air and shouts in glee. They all file out of the building and into the cool night at just after 10 p.m., two hours before the start of an Election Day that Flagg can’t yet vote in.

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BACK IN LAS VEGAS after the scrimmage against Team USA, Flagg walks through a back entrance and sits in a conference room, still wearing his jersey. He looks at the gash on his right arm, near the elbow.

“It’ll scab over in a couple days,” he said.

Online, the buzz about his performance is spreading. As he sits back in a chair, he says his versatility at his size comes from his parents not forcing him to play the center position even though he was often the tallest kid on the court. It allowed him to gain more experience on the perimeter, he says, to add more facets to his game. He thinks of his basketball belief system, and how it ties back to those principles that his parents preached, straight from those 1985-86 Celtics.

“Just watching how that team played,” Flagg said, “that’s kind of how I try to model myself playing on every team that I’ve been on.”

His parents’ nudging, and their efforts to point out how those Celtics played, helped shape him, he says. He doesn’t say Bird was his favorite player growing up, because Bird wasn’t playing then, but he does call Bird his “favorite legend to look up to.”

Even now, he says he tries to emulate Bird. “His vision — it was unreal, the way he passed the ball. And then he was scoring, playing defense. He was just doing everything.”

Bird isn’t the only player Flagg closely followed. He also admires Durant and, in particular, the 2017 Golden State Warriors — another powerhouse team that moved the ball with elite efficiency and dominated en route to an NBA championship.

But while numerous coaches and basketball observers continually said that how Flagg played — how complete his game was — seemed unique, he doesn’t feel that way.

“There’s players that do make all the right plays,” Flagg said. “Especially someone like LeBron, for example. He’s the type of player that just makes all his teammates better and is making the right play.”

He also doesn’t believe that style is becoming extinct.

“If you look at the Celtics this past year, I mean, prime example,” Flagg said. “Their biggest thing was fighting for the great shot in every possession. So I think to look at a team like that, it still is the road map. It’s still the right way. Nothing will ever beat that. Playing one-on-one basketball doesn’t win games. Playing as a team, for sure, does.”

He has seen the mock drafts that project him as the No. 1 pick. And when asked what that means to him, he interrupts.

“Nothing at all,” he said. “I mean if you look at the last 10 mock drafts, I bet only a couple of ’em have the top 10 anywhere near correct.”

Early on in life, he says, part of his motivation was to prove that Maine could produce great players, because there was always skepticism that it couldn’t.

“I felt like I had something to prove and I always use that to help just keep my head down,” he said, “but I think I’m just trying to represent the state in a good way more than trying to prove something at this point.”

As he thinks back to his past, Flagg looks forward. He rises from his chair, exits the conference room and begins to walk down a long, crowded hallway in the Bellagio. Top stars from Team USA walk through. There’s Durant. Then there’s Devin Booker. Then Anthony Davis. Each time one of them rounds a corner and comes into view, a throng of people waiting behind a red velvet rope scream and shout. There are pleas for autographs, for selfies.

Flagg follows the same path as those stars, but as he nears the people behind the velvet rope, it’s quiet. They don’t seem to know who he is — yet.