Cooper Flagg

[green_bballers13]

I think Cooper Flagg could be a Gordon Hayward type talent. Maybe a bit better considering he’s developing quicker than Gordon did. Hayward at his best was a 22pt/5reb/3ast player.

I saw some Gordon Hayward in him too.   He is not a great athlete, a lot of those dunks barely clear the rim, and he is playing against low level talent with marginal athletic ability in those films on youtube.

I'm not sure how you can say that he's not a great athlete. He was tremendous against the best players in the country.

[Goldstar88]

I think Cooper Flagg could be a Gordon Hayward type talent. Maybe a bit better considering he’s developing quicker than Gordon did. Hayward at his best was a 22pt/5reb/3ast player.

I saw some Gordon Hayward in him too.   He is not a great athlete, a lot of those dunks barely clear the rim, and he is playing against low level talent with marginal athletic ability in those films on youtube.

I'm not sure how you can say that he's not a great athlete. He was tremendous against the best players in the country.

I think he means that he’s not great athletically. Cooper is good, but it’s not like he’s jumping out of the gym like Mac McClung.

[Roy H.]

Cooper Flagg is the most exciting prospect to watch of my lifetime.  This is how the rest of the country must have felt about Lebron.

https://sports.yahoo.com/cooper-flagg-buzzer-beater-yet-224833733.html

Representing Penobscot County well, young man.

[gift]

I think Cooper Flagg could be a Gordon Hayward type talent. Maybe a bit better considering he’s developing quicker than Gordon did. Hayward at his best was a 22pt/5reb/3ast player.

I saw some Gordon Hayward in him too.   He is not a great athlete, a lot of those dunks barely clear the rim, and he is playing against low level talent with marginal athletic ability in those films on youtube.

I'm not sure how you can say that he's not a great athlete. He was tremendous against the best players in the country.

I think he means that he’s not great athletically. Cooper is good, but it’s not like he’s jumping out of the gym like Mac McClung.

but i mean...

[Vermont Green]

Cooper Flagg is the most exciting prospect to watch of my lifetime.  This is how the rest of the country must have felt about Lebron.

https://sports.yahoo.com/cooper-flagg-buzzer-beater-yet-224833733.html

Representing Penobscot County well, young man.

Couldn't agree more.  I have sort of Maine roots, Grandparents and prior generations all from Calais, ME but even as just a general New Englander, I am totally rooting for Cooper.  It is impossible to know at this point just how good he is going to be but he is definitely on track.  I doubt that Gordon Hayward was this good in high school (although I admit that I don't know).

[Kernewek]

The phrase I'm going to go with is 'tempered optimism'. I really hope he makes some noise in the NBA in a few years... but if he doesn't, that's all right too.

[gift]

Cooper Flagg is the most exciting prospect to watch of my lifetime.  This is how the rest of the country must have felt about Lebron.

https://sports.yahoo.com/cooper-flagg-buzzer-beater-yet-224833733.html

Representing Penobscot County well, young man.

Couldn't agree more.  I have sort of Maine roots, Grandparents and prior generations all from Calais, ME but even as just a general New Englander, I am totally rooting for Cooper.  It is impossible to know at this point just how good he is going to be but he is definitely on track.  I doubt that Gordon Hayward was this good in high school (although I admit that I don't know).

and then there's AJ Dybantsa (Needham, MA) who I believe is ranked #1 now that Flagg reclassified (according to what I've heard. I don't follow too closely).

[gouki88]

Flagg talks a lot about JT being his favourite player and wanting to play with him in Boston. Make it happen Silver! You got LeBron to stay in Ohio

[Goldstar88]

JT approves.

Jeff Goodman: Jayson Tatum got a close look at @Cooper_Flagg last month at his camp, and told me he was extremely impressed by the Maine native and No. 1 player in the country: “I like him a lot. Obviously, he’s athletic, he can dribble, shoot. The thing that impressed me was how hard he competed on both ends. He’s got an edge about him, not arrogant. He knows he’s good, but he realizes he’s got a long way to go. He’s going at guys, going at the pros. He was trying to block every shot, getting every rebound. He wasn’t playing cool. He was playing hard, competing. He was asking questions a lot, listening.” – via Twitter GoodmanHoops

[Ed Monix]

A surprisingly good shot at Cooper Flagg is the Thunder’s pick swap with the Clippers in 2025.

At the start of the 2024-25 season for the Clippers, Leonard will be 33 and George will be 34. Their contracts alone will be $97.4 million in cap space, add to that Norman Powell for $19.2 million, and you can see there is no hope to improve an already declining roster.

Sam Presti could turn the Paul George trade into the most one-sided in NBA history.

[Roy H.]

The impossible rise of Cooper Flagg
by Sam Canfield

Hailing from a rural Maine town of no more than 3,200, a 16-year-old kid is playing basketball at a level nobody from the state has before.

Newport native Cooper Flagg was a Maine state champion and the Gatorade Player of the Year as a freshman in early 2022. Less than a year-and-a-half later, he has earned the title of consensus No. 1 prospect nationwide, and recently had a high-profile first official college visit — to UConn, winner of the 2023 NCAA championship.

The 6-foot-9 teenager is expected to choose between UConn, Duke and Kansas in the next couple months, play a season of college ball in 2024-25 and then, if recent history is any indication, be a lottery pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

The last five No. 1 prospects, Marvin Bagley III, R.J. Barrett, Anthony Edwards, Cade Cunningham and Chet Holmgren, all had successful one-year college careers and were drafted by NBA teams with top three picks.

But what’s so unprecedented about Flagg, compared with those before him, is the improbable nature of his rise to prominence.

Despite its deep basketball culture, Maine is one of two states to never produce an NBA player, and its flagship school in Orono has never qualified for the men’s NCAA tournament. Against all odds, Flagg has emerged as the sport’s most exciting prospect, at a time when participation in youth sports is at a statewide low, and COVID-19 took away his eighth-grade year of basketball.

“You can’t predict anything like it,” said Earl Anderson, Flagg’s coach at Nokomis Regional High. “It’s like a Hollywood movie.”

Anderson coached Nokomis’ first ever state championship team, which Cooper and his twin brother Ace led to glory during the 2021-22 season.

“There were a lot of wild moments with him on the court; his ability was uncanny,” Anderson said. “I can’t tell you how many kids would line up for autographs.”

Flagg’s predecessors are few and far between.

There are Maine Basketball Hall of Famers Skip Chappelle and Andy Bedard, the York-born Miami Heat shooting guard Duncan Robinson and Bangor-born big man Jeff Turner who played on the ’90s Orlando Magic.

But neither Chappelle nor Bedard ever played a minute of NBA ball, and Robinson and Turner spent most of their childhoods in New Hampshire and Florida, respectively.


Moreover, UMaine’s men’s basketball team has not been particularly inspirational as of late, failing to reach .500 since the 2010-11 season and compiling a dismal 88-259 record since then.

Yet Flagg is a Newport product through and through — and he could be a top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

“This area will always consider him a Nokomis kid, and he will embrace that,” Anderson said. “That championship team was a very close group; they had all played together as kids.”

The Flaggs have lived in Newport for multiple generations, and both of Cooper’s parents played basketball at Nokomis. His mom, Kelly, ended up being a standout post player at UMaine, and his dad, Ralph, played at Eastern Maine Community College.

“Of all their high school memories, that Nokomis championship will always be number one for them,” Flagg’s personal trainer Matt MacKenzie said of Cooper and Ace. “They’re both very family-oriented and proud of their Newport roots.”

MacKenzie runs Results Basketball and the Eastern Maine Sports Academy in Veazie, and also was an assistant coach on Flagg’s Maine United AAU team that went on an unexpected second-place run at the Nike Peach Jam this July.

Maine United shocked everyone by winning its first six consecutive games, including a 73-65 victory over tournament champs NightRydas Elite in pool play, with Flagg averaging a mind-blowing 25.4 points, 13.0 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 6.9 blocks per game.

“Nobody else believed, and we said, ‘let’s go make some noise,’” MacKenzie recalled. “Cooper could have played anywhere, but he wanted to play with his boys — to wear ‘Maine’ across his chest.”

With his ridiculous blocks and putback dunks, Cooper ended up on dozens of YouTube and Instagram highlight reels with thousands of views, posted by sports media outlets like Overtime, Ballislife and EliteMixtapes.

“There are kids from all backgrounds — the inner city — looking up to a kid from Maine,” MacKenzie said. “We’re just starting to see the impact he could have.”

Anderson and MacKenzie are optimistic that Flagg could even help reverse the declining participation rates in Maine youth sports.

Due to a large decrease in the population of high-school-aged Mainers in the past decade, combined with the pandemic, youth sports participation in Maine is down 12 percent from 2013.

But Flagg is dedicated to being an ambassador of the sport, and has worked at Results Basketball’s youth camps during his summers off from school. MacKenzie says participants have been ecstatic to train with him.

“The energy has shifted from playing with counselors like NBA champion [Brian Scalabrine] of the Boston Celtics to Cooper,” MacKenzie said. “Everyone wants to see him.”

Flagg is now back finishing his final year at Montverde Academy in Florida, where he helped the Eagles win a national title last season. He recently reclassified to the Class of 2024, meaning his college decision is weeks away — the ultimate step in any basketball career before declaring for the NBA draft.

It’s unclear how Flagg will fare when he moves on to college or even the pros, but his intangibles make people around him want to believe in his future.

“He impacted every part of the game — he made everyone else better,” Anderson said. “He’s very coachable, very grounded and a great teammate.”

“It is rare, but to me his success is not an accident,” MacKenzie said. “He has a blue-collar work ethic and was taught from a young age that success is earned, not given. He genuinely loves the game, loves to be coached and absolutely lives to compete. It’s scary how special he could be.”

[gouki88]

Now, how do we tamper sneakily enough to get him?

[Roy H.]

He's committed to Duke, choosing them over UConn.

[Kernewek]

Boo. Booo.

[Donoghus]

Boo. Booo.

Yeah, rooting for Duke is a no-go with me.  Good luck to Flagg, though.