When it comes to basketball, 32 is a great number for the Flagg family.
That’s the number that Cooper Flagg will be wearing when he makes his NBA regular season debut for the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs. It’s the number both he and his mother, Kelly Flagg, wore at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport.
But 32 is a less-than-ideal number in another game that the Flagg family enjoys: Cribbage.
It’s just one numeral too many in the centuries-old game’s pegging portion, where players trade cards and try to get as close to 31 as possible without going over.
That’s just one way to score points in the somewhat complicated but quickly enthralling game that melds counting and competition.
“If you only knew the cribbage battles we’re having in Dallas right now in our back yard,” Kelly Flagg said recently when the whole Flagg family was back in the Pine Tree State for her induction into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame.
The Flagg family’s competitiveness on the basketball court is already a thing of legend. It has helped propel Cooper Flagg to unprecedented heights for a Maine basketball player. It’s demonstrated in his twin brother Ace Flagg’s toughness on the court as he launches his college career at the University of Maine. It was a hallmark of Kelly Flagg’s time as a player, both at Nokomis and UMaine.
That competitiveness helped Kelly Flagg earn that spot in the Maine Sports Hall of Fame. And when she was being inducted in September, she also explained to the Bangor Daily News how the Flagg family’s competitive spirit also shows up on the cribbage board.
She and husband Ralph Flagg both played basketball at Nokomis before going on to play college basketball in Maine. They’ve played a lot of one-on-one against each other on the court, and now the head-to-head matchups include contentious games of cribbage in Texas where Cooper Flagg is building his NBA career.
Cribbage isn’t the only off-the-court avenue for challenging that competitive spirit, either. Games of cornhole are also in the mix.
“Everything basically that we can turn into competition between the two of us is our new thing,” she added. “And of course I’m winning at everything.”
Even when she and her husband traded a few good-natured allegations about bending the rules and luck, Flagg remained unshakable in her confidence.
“He thinks it’s all luck,” she said with a smile. “It’s skill. It’s science.”
Her father and former basketball coach, Dan Bowman, was also in attendance for the hall of fame ceremony. She asked him to tell a reporter what their family calls cribbage.
Bowman didn’t hesitate.
“Science,” he replied.
Kelly Flagg said her sons “have played” the card game, though it seems that the parents and grandparents take it the most seriously.
Bowman, like Ralph Flagg, seemed to think his daughter’s cribbage prowess is fueled by both luck and cheating.
But Kelly Flagg sees it as a matter of clairvoyance.
“Sometimes I just will say, ‘Jeez, I haven’t gotten many points. I haven’t pegged many lately. I think it’s time for a double run,’” she said. “And lo and behold, it pops up in my hand. And they think I’m cheating.”
Cribbage players can score in a variety of ways — including by trying to piece together multiples of the same card or “runs” of sequential cards. And while cheating is obviously a no-no, there’s nothing in the rule book about being clairvoyant.
“We love it. It’s fun,” Kelly Flagg added about cribbage.
Mainers have been loving cribbage for generations, as Emily Burnham helped explain in the BDN a few years ago. As Burnham noted, the game isn’t unique to Maine or New England, but there is a particular regional affinity for it here. That’s something the Flaggs have noticed as they’ve been outside of Maine.
The game has roots in 17th century England, Burnham said, and now it helps members of the Flagg family stay connected to their roots even as basketball has taken them around the country.
“When we were in North Carolina, we mentioned cribbage, and people were like, ‘What’s that?’” Kelly Flagg said about their time in the Tar Heel State, where Ace Flagg won a high school state title and Cooper Flagg played his one and only year of college basketball at Duke University.
As Cooper Flagg officially takes his competitiveness to the NBA court, you can expect his family to stay competitive on the cribbage board as well.
