Five months ago USA Basketball convened an inter-squad scrimmage in Las Vegas before the Paris Olympics, and the standout player was a gawky teenager from Maine.
Related: NCAA basketball 2024-25 predictions: will Cooper Flagg live up to the hype?
On that heady July day, Cooper Flagg showed flashes of his sky-high potential, out-jumping Bam Adebayo for a put-back layup, spinning off Jrue Holiday for a baseline jumper and burying a corner three over an outstretched Anthony Davis to key a near upset of Team USA’s “Monstars.” One NBA head coach in attendance called Flagg the 13th-best player in the gym (behind Indiana Pacers leading man Tyrese Halliburton and Boston Celtics point guard Derrick White, ostensibly), while Kevin Durant endorsed Flagg’s on court sangfroid as “a good sign.” As the clips of Flagg’s workout circulated online, hoops fans couldn’t help speculating about the further damage the 6ft 9in teen terror might do in college basketball.
Flagg, who turns 18 on Saturday, has been as compelling on the court in his first year at Duke, pacing the team in scoring and rebounding as the No 5-ranked Blue Devils zoomed to a 9-2 season start. He ranks 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 stats, it’s the freshman forward’s high intensity, hustle and efficacy on defensive that standout most right now. (“We ain’t had no bad-ass, cold-ass white boy like this in a long time,” former teen phenom Kevin Garnett said on his podcast. “I can see kids wanting to be like that and play like that.”) In past years those traits would’ve doomed Flagg to college hoops infamy as the latest white supervillain to don a Blue Devils jersey. But in the dawning era of anti-wokeness, Flagg is poised to become an even more daunting figure in sports lore: the next great white hope, Caitlin Clark 2.0.
You thought Clark broke the basketball discourse? Clark at least gave her casual observers time to turn her into a culture warrior. Flagg, as ESPN’s Jay Bilas noted, is “the most popular export from Maine since lobster,” a magazine cover boy with a robust social media following who links to his Hollywood reps in his bios. He is a one-and-done college star, headed for the 2025 NBA draft as soon as Duke’s season is done – and a third of it is already gone. With too a short runway for a slow-building villain arc, Flagg is forced to cut right to the chase. He must do in four months what took Clark four years to accomplish, and that’s turn college basketball into a politically charged public square. Again.
You thought Clark was a folk hero in Iowa? Flagg’s rural Maine community threw a parade after he led his high school team to its first ever state championship as a freshman, with fire trucks and fireworks. On long rides to and from games, he watched game footage from the Boston Celtics’ 1986 NBA championship-winning season on a portable DVD player. He patterned his game after Larry Bird’s, taking in the full catalog of the head fakes and footwork. His parents were both standout basketball players, and his twin brother, Ace (who’s 6ft 8in), has a future playing college ball, too. (He’s still in high school.) Essentially, Cooper was fated to become the stuff of basketball legend.
An early college enrollee, Flagg arrived at Duke boasting endorsement deals with New Balance and Gatorade. No disrespect to Clark, but he’s not a bright basketball comet streaking across a football campus; he’s white-knighting it from college hoop’s ivory tower – the perennial primetime TV draw that produced top NBA draft picks Kyrie Irving, Zion Williamson and Paolo Banchero. Flagg is projected to become the school’s third top pick since 2019 – the year Williamson crossed the draft stage dressed in all white after the New Orleans Pelicans called his name. Flagg, who is being touted as the best college prospect since Williamson, pictures a similar moment for himself. “[Going first] is something every kid dreams of,” he told the Washington Post. “I’m definitely working toward that.” When another college kid dreams big like this, it’s sweet; when it’s a Dukie harboring visions of grandeur, one can’t help detecting notes of white privilege.
That’s not a comment on Flagg, staunch ally to the disadvantaged. (Most notably, he supports the Ronald McDonald House, a charity that provides free room and board to families with children in hospital care.) That’s a comment on Duke, the predominantly white bastion of excellence that produced drugs war czar Richard Nixon, Maga sith lord Stephen Miller and the white supremacist Richard Spencer. The Blue Devils don’t have regional fans; they have a national network of true believers. They camp outside the team’s arena to buy tickets. They stoke a blood feud 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 “heckle responsibly”. It’s the kind of thing you can count on Magaworld to seize on the moment they feel Flagg has been treated unjustly – whether by opposing players or the refs or even members of his own team.
To mark the retirement of Mike Krzyzewski, the coach most responsible for building Duke into walled garden it is today, the sports boffin Bomani Jones curated a pop-up exhibition in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that 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 famously annoyed opponent by habitually intruding on their personal space) are just a few of the Duke luminaries who live in college hoops infamy. “I once dribbled the ball across half court against Bobby Hurley, and he just fell for no reason,” explains former Michigan star Jalen Rose, a live exhibit in the Jones sketch. “They called a charge. Goddamn flopper.”
Still: even as those Duke big bads were thoroughly vilified in their day while keeping the team in contention for national titles (and the Blue Devils rank fifth all-time with five altogether), the racial and cultural politics of their villainy were largely confined to the basketball court. If a pol or a pundit weighed in on their situations, it was because there was a genuine rooting interest at stake – not some larger point to prove to their political allies. In our current age of digital restlessness, however, everything is in bounds. A hard foul on Clark is justifiable cause for a sitting member of Congress to write an open letter condemning the play as a “cheap shot.” Flagg should consider himself fortunate that Clark trolls were blissfully unaware of his outstanding practice with Team USA. It’s not hard to imagine them advocating for him to make the roster over a far more deserving NBA vet, just to see a token Dukie on a dream team again.
You thought Clark warped wider expectations of the WNBA? That league at least has white players at the top of the draft every now and again. Flagg is bidding to become the first white American since Indiana’s Kent Benson in 1977 to go first in the NBA draft. Which is just another way of saying he’s being tapped to make basketball great again, to rescue it from its Black-coded swagger and multinational influences. But if there’s cause for non-Dukies to root for Flagg, it’s that, like Clark, he’s not trying to be much more than a humble teen from Maine. “For me, it’s about just playing basketball,” Flagg said. “As far as hype and all that goes, that’s something that you learn to deal with.” That he ain’t seen nothing yet should have those inclined to enjoy his game for what it is and could someday become bracing for the absolute worst.
