NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. — Just one year ago, he was here inside the Riverview Park Activities Center, turning in one ridiculous performance after another at Peach Jam while further growing his status as a generational talent and likely future No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. One game, he got 38 points, 16 rebounds and 12 blocks. Another game, he got 37 points, 12 rebounds and 10 blocks. From start to finish, he dominated everybody in the 16-and-under division in a way that eliminated any good reasons to pass on the opportunity to reclassify from the Class of 2025 to the Class of 2024, graduate early and enroll at Duke.
I’m writing about Cooper Flagg, of course.
Everybody is these days — especially after the 6-foot-9 forward was sensational earlier this month while training with Team USA in Las Vegas in advance of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. In one sequence that went viral, Flagg handled pressure from Jrue Holiday with zero issues, used a screen to get Anthony Davis switched onto him and then buried a 3-pointer in the face of the future Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer.
Think about this for a moment.
One year, you’re playing against a bunch of other 16 year-olds in a small town in South Carolina. Just 12 months later, you’re out in Las Vegas, on the court with LeBron James, Steph Curry and Anthony Edwards, driving for dunks, extending for blocks, launching from 3-point range and just generally looking very comfortable against some of the best players in the world even though you won’t turn 18 until December.
“He looked like a hell of a player — [like] somebody that’s just going to only get better with more experience,” said Kevin Durant, who is one of just three men to ever do what some believe Flagg could do next season, i.e., win the John R. Wooden Award as a freshman. “[He’s] 17 years old coming in here playing like he’s a vet almost. No emotion. Just going out there and doing his job. And that’s a good sign.”
Yes, Flagg created quite the buzz in Las Vegas — first with the way he performed, then with the way America’s best talked about him. Consequently, the centerpiece of Duke’s top-ranked recruiting class has been a constant topic of conversation among industry folks here at Peach Jam, which serves as an indication that he’ll enter college as the sport’s biggest star even though established All-Americans like R.J. Davis (North Carolina), Hunter Dickinson (Kansas) and Mark Sears (Alabama) are back in school.
It was here inside this 120,000-square-foot facility, six miles across the Savannah River from Augusta National Golf Club, where Flagg really burst onto the national scene in July 2022. Just days after helping USA Basketball win gold in the Under-17 World Cup in Spain, the then 15-year-old returned stateside to compete in his first Peach Jam and solidified his status as a rare 5-star prospect from the state of Maine.
Flagg, the son of two former college basketball players, was later named the 2022 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year, making him the youngest person to ever win that award. From there, it’s been more of the same. With nowhere to go but down, the graduate of Montverde Academy in Florida somehow kept going up, eventually establishing himself as the clearcut No. 1 recruit in 2024 despite being a year younger than most other prospects in the class. He’s currently the reigning Gatorade National Player of the Year, Naismith High School Player of the Year and winner of the Mr. Basketball USA award.
So what should we expect at Duke?
That’s the question fans have been asking me most lately — and thus the question I asked various college coaches who spent the past two years watching Flagg tear up grassroots basketball. Simply put, everybody agrees, there’s no reason to think he’ll be anything other than really, really good given that he has never struggled against older people since emerging as a national prospect, and given that he was just really, really good in a training camp with All-NBA stars who were, in some cases, more than twice his age. Rest assured, the bust-potential here is so low that it borders on non-existent. He’s going to be terrific. But will Flagg also be the best — specifically so great that he’ll become the first freshman to win the Wooden Award since Duke’s Zion Williamson did it in 2019?
That’s actually a much tougher question to answer.
Again, Flagg won’t turn 18 until December.
And though it’s important to reemphasize that “playing up” has never been an issue, it’s also worth noting that it’s now more challenging than it used to be for freshmen to flourish in college basketball, in part because NIL deals are keeping older awesome players in school longer than they otherwise would stay. Did you realize not a single freshman earned CBS Sports First Team, Second Team or Third Team All-America honors last season? Combine that with the fact that three CBS Sports All-Americans are back in school, and with the fact that Williamson is the only freshman to win the Wooden Award in any of the past 12 seasons, and with the fact that literally none of the men who have ever won the Wooden Award as freshmen have been as young as Flagg will be as a freshman, and you start to realize it’s a big ask.
Durant, the 2007 Wooden Award winner and first freshman to ever receive the trophy, entered college slightly older than Flagg is entering college. Davis, the 2012 Wooden Award winner and second freshman to ever receive the trophy, entered college roughly nine months older than Flagg is entering college. And Williamson, the 2019 Wooden Award winner and third freshman to ever receive the trophy, entered college roughly 17 months older than Flagg is entering college.
In other words, nobody as young as Cooper Flagg will be next season has ever won the Wooden Award in the history of the sport. That’s why some are taking a wait-and-see approach. But it’s pretty clear to most basketball observers that we’ve already seen enough to reasonably conclude he’ll be impactful.
But how impactful? And how quickly?
In less than four months, we’ll start finding out.
