A Great Cooper Flagg Read
This really is good work.
Most people who follow basketball with some passion heard of Cooper Flagg a few years ago.
As his career advances, we learn more and more of his backstory. Most of you will have heard of his rise, that he grew up on a solid diet of the 1986 Celtics, his transfer to Montverde, that both of his parents were players and that he had a sensational run this past summer with the Select Team before the Paris Olympics.
There’s much more to his story though, and this article from ESPN really lays a lot of it out.
People knew early, and it wasn’t just talent. It was also his willingness to work and his ability to learn quickly. Here are a couple of quick hits from the article:
- Inside the gym, [Andy] 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.
[Matt] MacKenzie told him he had a young player — a 6-foot-6 eighth grader — whom he wanted him to play. [Ja’Shonté] 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 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. [Former Boston Celtic Brian] Scalabrine laughed. His pass timing, Scalabrine later said, reminded him of LeBron James.
What’s exciting here is not just the early development, but the fierce desire and the trajectory. He hasn’t really been tested in college yet but there’s a pretty good chance that’ll come Tuesday night against Kentucky.