Cooper Flagg is exceeding unfathomably high expectations

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Cooper Flagg’s first basketball role model wasn’t LeBron James, Stephen Curry or any other modern-day NBA megastar.

It was a player who retired 14 years before the ballyhooed Duke freshman was even born.

When Flagg and his twin brother, Ace, were in elementary school in his hometown of Newport, Maine, their parents purchased them DVDs chronicling the life and career of Larry Bird. Cooper Flagg would lie on the living room floor watching documentaries on Bird and on his rivalry with Magic Johnson. Or he’d pass time in the back of the family’s Chrysler minivan on the way to practices watching full-game replays over and over from the 1985-86 Celtics season

The purpose, according to Flagg’s parents, was more than just to introduce their sons to a Boston Celtics legend and to one of the franchise’s most beloved championship teams. Kelly and Ralph Flagg would point out that Bird was the Celtics’ best player and leading scorer, yet look how he disrupted opposing offenses by anticipating passes, dove after loose balls and sacrificed good shots for great ones.

“What we tried to instill in our kids is that however you can have an impact on winning, that’s the most important thing,” Kelly Flagg, who co-captained the University of Maine women’s team in 1999, told Yahoo Sports this past November. “That’s really to me what Larry Bird encapsulates as a player. He did whatever the team needed him to do night in and night out. Cooper is the same way. He isn’t somebody who feels like doing the dirty work is beneath him.”

The basketball education that Flagg gained studying Bird helped shape what sort of prospect he would become. Scouts rave about Flagg’s winning mentality, unparalleled competitiveness and relentless drive to get better as much as they do his rare combination of size, coordination, skill and athleticism.

Even though he only turned 18 last month, Flagg leads Duke in every statistical category, from points to rebounds to assists to blocks to steals….

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Source link : https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/cooper-flagg-is-exceeding-unfathomably-high-expectations-165425506.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-22 16:54:00

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