Five months ago, USA Basketball hosted an inter-squad scrimmage in Las Vegas before the Paris Olympics, and the standout player was an awkward teenager from Maine.
Related: 2024-2025 NCAA Basketball Predictions: Will Cooper Flagg Live Up to the Hype?
On that heady day in July, Cooper Flagg showed flashes of his sky-high potential, outshooting Bam Adebayo for a putback, teeing off Jrue Holiday for a baseline jumper and burying a corner three over a sprawling Anthony Davis to take a lead . almost upset Team USA’s “Monstars.” An NBA head coach in attendance called Flagg the 13th best player in the gym (behind Indiana Pacers leader Tyrese Halliburton and Boston Celtics point guard Derrick White, ostensibly), while Kevin Durant endorsed Flagg’s on-court sangfroid as “a good sign.” As clips of Flagg’s workout circulated online, hoops fans couldn’t help speculating about the further damage the 6-foot-1 teen terror could cause. secondary school basketball.
Flagg, who turns 18 on Saturday, was just as compelling on the court in his freshman year at Duke, leading the team in scoring and rebounding as the No. 5 ranked Blue Devils zoomed to a 9-2 start to the season. He is among the most productive freshmen in the country, even as he continues to work on finishing at the rim and knocking down jumpers. More than the stats, it’s the freshman forward’s high intensity, hustle and effectiveness on defense that stand out the most right now. (“We haven’t had a tough, cold, white kid in a long time,” said former teen phenom Kevin Garnett on his podcast. “I see kids wanting to be like that and play like that.”) In years past, these traits would have made Flagg having been doomed to college infamy as the latest white supervillain to don a Blue Devils jersey. But in the dawning age of anti-wokeness, Flagg is poised to become an even more terrifying figure in sports history: the next great white hope, Caitlin Clark 2.0.
Did you think Clark broke the basketball discourse? At least Clark gave her casual observers time to turn her into a culture warrior. Flagg is, as ESPN’s Jay Bilas noted, “Maine’s hottest export since lobster,” a magazine cover guy with a robust social media following and who links to his Hollywood representatives in his bio. He’s a bona fide college star who’s bound for the 2025 NBA draft once Duke’s season is over — and a third of that is already gone. With the runway too short for a slow-building villain arc, Flagg is forced to give chase. He must do in four months what it took Clark four years to accomplish, and that is turn college basketball into a politically charged public square. Again.
Did you think Clark was a folk hero in Iowa? The rural Maine community of Flagg hosted a parade after he led his high school team to its first-ever state championship as a freshman, with fire trucks and fireworks. During long drives to and from games, he watched game footage from the Boston Celtics’ 1986 NBA championship season on a portable DVD player. He patterned his game after that of Larry Bird, using the full catalog of head and footwork. took up. His parents were both standout basketball players, and his twin brother, Ace (who stands 6 feet tall), also has a future as a college ball player. (He’s still in high school.) Essentially, Cooper was destined to be the stuff of basketball legend.
Flagg, an early student at the university arrived at Duke with endorsement deals with New Balance and Gatorade. No disrespect to Clark, but he’s not some bright basketball comet shooting over a football campus; he’s the knight of college hoops’ ivory tower — the perennial primetime TV draft that produced top NBA draft picks Kyrie Irving, Zion Williamson and Paolo Banchero. Flagg is expected to be the school’s third top pick since 2019 — the year Williamson stepped onto the draft stage dressed in all white after the New Orleans Pelicans called his name. Flagg, touted as the best college student since Williamson, imagines a similar moment for himself. “[Going first] is something every child dreams of,” he told the Washington Post. “I’m definitely working on that.” When another student dreams that big, that’s sweet; if it’s a Dukie who harbors visions of greatness, you can’t help but notice notes of white privilege.
That’s not a comment on Flagg, a staunch ally of the underprivileged. (Most notably, he supports the Ronald McDonald House, a charity that provides free room and board to families with hospitalized children.) That’s a commentary on Duke, the predominantly white bastion of excellence that drug war czar Richard Nixon , Maga sith lord Stephen Miller and white supremacist Richard Spencer. The Blue Devils have no regional fans; they have a national network of true believers. They camp outside the team’s arena to buy tickets. They stoke a vendetta with North Carolina, an elite basketball power just eight miles southwest. And they taunt visiting teams with campaign-style opposition research — so much so that the student government convened a DEI town hall earlier this year just to encourage Duke basketball supporters to “discuss responsibly.” It’s something you can count on Magaworld to seize upon whenever they feel Flagg has been treated unfairly – whether by opponents or the referees, or even by members of his own team.
To mark the retirement of Mike Krzyzewski, the coach most responsible for building Duke into the walled garden it is today, sports expert Bomani Jones has curated a pop-up exhibition at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, highlighting Coach K’s traumatizing effect on black players. , teams and communities. Christian Laettner (who once stomped on a rival’s chest), Grayson Allen (who knocked over anyone who got in his way), and Lakers coach JJ Redick (who irritated his opponent by habitually invading their personal space) are just some of the dukes celebrities living in infamy at college. “I once dribbled the ball half-court against Bobby Hurley, and it just fell for no reason,” explains former Michigan star Jalen Rose, a live show in the Jones skit. “They have filed charges. Damn flop.”
Still, even though Duke’s big bads were thoroughly vilified in their day while keeping the team in contention for national titles (and the Blue Devils ranked fifth all-time with five total), racial and cultural politics of their villains largely confined to the basketball court. If a police officer or an expert intervened in their situation, it was because there was a truly fundamental interest at stake – and not a larger point that needed to be proven to their political allies. However, in our current age of digital turmoil, it is everything is within limits. A harsh foul on Clark is a justifiable reason for a sitting congressman to write an open letter condemning the piece as a “cheap shot.” Flagg is fortunate that the Clark trolls were completely unaware of his excellent practice with Team USA. It’s not hard to imagine them advocating for him to be on the roster over a much more deserving NBA vet just to see a token Dukie on a dream team again.
Did you think Clark was distorting the WNBA’s broader expectations? At least that league occasionally has white players at the top of the draft. Flagg wants to become the first white American since Indiana’s Kent Benson in 1977 to go first in the NBA draft. That’s just another way of saying he’s being brought in to make basketball great again, to save it from its black-coded swagger and multinational influences. But if there’s any reason for non-Dukies to support Flagg, it’s that, like Clark, he’s not trying to be much more than an unassuming teenager from Maine. “For me, it’s about just playing basketball,” Flagg said. “As far as hype and stuff goes, that’s something you learn to deal with.” That he hasn’t seen anything yet should encourage those to enjoy his game for what it is and brace themselves for the very worst one day.
