For about two years, Cooper Flagg has been expected to be the top pick in the 2025 NBA draft. That will finally become a reality Wednesday, as the Dallas Mavericks are set to select the former Duke star first overall.
The biggest question during draft week, then, is not who will go No. 1, but what kind of player the Mavericks will be getting in one of the most intriguing prospects of the last 15 years.
“He trends like LeBron James,” said Brian Scalabrine, who played 11 years in the NBA and has been training with Flagg since he was in his early teens. “LeBron has a beautiful mind when it comes to this game. Cooper’s brain is right on par with those guys. They just process the game differently.”
“I really think he’s going to be one of those guys who makes people around him better,” said Orlando Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley, who coached Flagg on the USA Select Team last summer. “People might get caught up in his numbers. But I think he’s going to be one of those pluses that’s always on the floor, all the while finding his range and his space.”
Grant Hill, the managing director of USA Basketball, said Flagg’s best attribute is his versatility.
“He can read the game and figure out what’s needed from him for his team to have success,” Hill told NBC News. “He assesses what’s happening in the game and has the talent and ability to provide what’s needed, and that’s unique particularly for someone so young.”
Flagg, 18, grew up in Newport, Maine, before attending his final two years of high school at Montverde Academy in central Florida. (Montverde is less of a school and more of an incubator for future professional athletes.)
After his sophomore year, Flagg reclassified from the high school class of 2025 to 2024, immediately becoming a senior and putting himself on track to enter the NBA this summer.
His prowess as a player, however, dates back much further. As with many legends, Flagg’s earliest memories of competition are from his driveway, where he would often play his twin brother, Ace, in a game of one-on-one.
“That’s where it started, for sure, scrapping it out in the driveway” Flagg told NBC News at an AT&T Flaggship Experience event. “You never want to lose to your brothers.”
Ace Flagg said the battles were incredibly physical.
“Without fail, any time we played, someone’s running inside to Mom crying because someone hit them,” he said.
By the time he was 13, Cooper’s parents were so invested in his basketball career that he had a trainer, Matt Mackenzie. It was Mackenzie who put him on Scalabrine’s radar.
“Matt calls me up and says, ‘I got this 13-year-old kid who plays against University of Maine kids. The first 15 minutes he’s feeling it out, and the last 15 minutes he’s the best player on the floor,’” Scalabrine said. “In this situation, in my mind, I love Matt, but you’re nuts.”
Scalabrine was skeptical, so he invited Flagg to participate in a pickup game he organizes in Boston, which Scalabrine said includes former pros and college players.
“And sure enough, the guy walks out of the SUV, throws on his knee braces and dominates the run,” Scalabrine said. “The level of my gym went to a 100x than it normally would. Right then and there, I told his parents he would go to the NBA.”
Flagg continued to shine no matter what court he was playing on.
In his first season at Nokomis Regional High School, he became the first freshman to win Maine’s Gatorade Player of the Year award.
He also put up dominant performances for his AAU team. At Nike’s Peach Jam tournament in the summer of 2023, going head-to-head against other top prospects, Flagg averaged 25.4 points, 13 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 6.9 blocks per game.
At Duke, he led the Blue Devils to their first Final Four in three years, putting up 21 points. 7.6 rebounds and 5 assists a night in the NCAA Tournament.
His most impressive performance may have come last summer, however, before he had even played a college game. That’s when Flagg was invited to help sharpen the skills of Team USA ahead of the Paris Olympics, scrimmaging against the likes of LeBron James and Stephen Curry as part of the Select Team.
Hill, a Duke alum, first picked up on the Flagg hype watching his high school games. Hill’s friend had a son on Montverde’s team, and Hill noticed Flagg’s motor and competitive drive from when he was a sophomore. Hill wasn’t necessarily evaluating Flagg at the time, but when USA Basketball scouts recommended Flagg for the Select Team, he figured it was worth a shot.
“Let’s bring him in and see how he does,” Hill said of the thinking behind bringing Flagg to the pre-Paris camp. “He may be one of those names in 2027 that might be under consideration for the World Cup team or down the road. We weren’t totally sure how he would do or how he would adjust. He made us look really good.”
Mosley, Flagg’s coach at the camp, marveled at the 17-year-old’s curious and inquisitive nature. He admits it’s “coach talk” to say so, but Mosley said what impressed him most about Flagg was how much care he put into every part of practice. He specifically recalled a defensive drill in practice during which Flagg pulled a teammate, Orlando Magic guard Jalen Suggs, aside for extra insight.
“He was just asking a ton of questions. Defensively, that stood out,” Mosley said, adding that he believes Flagg will be a better defender in the NBA than people expect. “Offensively, he was always trying to make the right play at the right time. You could see how his brain was clicking on making different reads based on where people were on the floor.”
Clips of Flagg’s performance went viral. He ran pick-and-rolls with Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum as his primary defender. He drove to the hoop against James. He hit a turnaround fadeaway over Celtics guard Jrue Holiday and a pull-up 3 in the face of Mavericks big man Anthony Davis.
Even before his first college game, Flagg looked comfortable on the floor against the elite of the NBA’s elite.
Mosley said what stood out about Flagg was “his fearlessness to not worry about the name on the jersey and just recognize he’s a good enough basketball player to be on the floor with these guys.”
Hill said: “He didn’t back down. He felt like he belonged. He showed everybody why there had been so much talk about him. Everybody who was there in the gym — including those that were on the court— I think they walked away with a lot of respect for him and his game.”
In every basketball environment he’s been thrown into, Flagg has succeeded. Now all that’s left for him is the NBA, where he will take his versatility and decision-making to a veteran-laden Mavericks team that needs the exact type of player Flagg is on the wing.
“I think what he’s demonstrated is, even with all the accolades and all the attention, that his desire to work and get better and improve is through the roof,” Hill said. “What you’ll see in the first month, the first year, is only the beginning of what his potential is.”
