People across the country are set to watch Cooper Flagg become the number one pick in the NBA draft, with the Dallas Mavericks widely expected to make him the first overall selection Wednesday night.
A much smaller group of people here in Maine got to watch behind the scenes as Flagg’s relentless work ethic and competitiveness helped propel him to unimaginable heights in the basketball world.
Some of the people closest to him, including family members and longtime coaches, have stressed at various points during this improbable how central Flagg’s drive and hard work have been in his remarkable journey.
“He wants it so bad, and he was born to play this game,” Andy Bedard, Flagg’s longtime AAU coach, told the Bangor Daily News as Flagg was leading Duke during March Madness. “And his work and his sacrifices and commitment — it’s just great to be able to see the results like this.”
Flagg’s non-stop motor has allowed him to make the seemingly impossible feel routine. He has faced sky-high expectations since before even stepping foot on the court in high school, and has somehow exceeded those expectations at every turn.
A Maine state championship. A Chipotle Nationals title. A Final Four appearance and a trophy case full of nearly every player of the year award in men’s college basketball. At every stage, Flagg’s unyielding desire to win and willingness to put in the work necessary to do so has set him apart.
“His competitiveness is what fuels him. And his will to win just makes him so much better,” Matt MacKenzie, Flagg’s player development coach, said in March. “So he can be having an off shooting night but he’s going to find areas where he can impact the game in other ways.”
It’s one thing to have a 6-foot-9 frame, or a basketball family pedigree with both parents who excelled at the collegiate level in Maine. It’s another thing entirely to not be satisfied with the physical gifts, and to commit wholeheartedly to getting better each and every day.
“We’re just so proud of him and the work that he’s put in,” his mother Kelly Flagg told the BDN earlier this year.
It’s a sentiment shared in their hometown of Newport and across Maine as Flagg gets set to start his NBA career. And like Flagg’s effort on and off the court, that pride has been clear for quite some time.
“Watching this story unfold, you can’t encapsulate into words how proud you are — and you don’t even know him,” Hermon native Karen Clark said more than a year ago when she and her family watched Flagg play in Portland. “My boss is close with his family, so we’ve been following him the past few years, and we’re always going to follow him. It’s that hometown feeling.”
Flagg helped deliver a state championship for his hometown of Newport in his freshman year at Nokomis Regional High School. And Earl Anderson had a chance to coach a “once in a lifetime generational player” that season.
“What makes him easy to coach is he’s a great teammate,” Anderson said about Flagg earlier this year. “He makes all his teammates better, and when your best player is the best teammate, that just makes everything easy — not easy, but it makes coaching him and the team really rewarding.”
The 18-year-old Flagg has racked up an impressive collection of statistical achievements and awards in his young career. He has wowed NBA scouts with his length and tremendous upside as a still-developing player. But beyond the stats and measurements, it is his drive, his basketball IQ, his will to win and his fearlessness that may best explain his unlikely journey from Newport to the NBA.
And they have been on display every step of the way, including when Flagg scored on various U.S. Olympians last summer in a viral display of his abilities.
“The most impressive thing is that he’s not scared,” USA Select Team assistant coach Jim Boylen, a former UMaine standout, said last July. “He played really well both days, and is an elite two-way player. He makes people around him better.”
He’s inspiring other Maine kids to be better, too. As Flagg helped Duke advance in the NCAA tournament, he was also helping young Maine basketball players recalibrate their sense of what is possible.
“He’s made it all this way, and he’s from a small town in Maine, so that means I could work hard and also get where he’s at,” 9-year-old Landon Walker of Milo said in March during one of the early rounds of the tournament.
When Cooper Flagg’s name is called at the NBA draft on Wednesday night, he is poised to make Maine history. This state has never seen anything like his rise, and we may never see anything approaching it ever again. But if we do, it will be because Flagg proved it possible, and inspired the next generation along the way.
