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Jeff Borzello, ESPN Staff Writer
Since the summer of 2023, when he produced an historically dominant month of July and then reclassified into the high school class of 2024, Cooper Flagg has been the projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft.
The hype has only grown in the past 15 months. Flagg committed to Duke, led Montverde Academy (Florida) to an undefeated season and national high school championship, then held his own against the USA Basketball Olympic team as the first college player since 2013 to be named to the USA Basketball Men’s Select Team. He also has multiple National Player of the Year awards and a gold medal from 2022. Flagg is 6-foot-9 with an incredible work ethic and skillset at both ends of the floor.
Oh, and he doesn’t turn 18 years old until December.
The accolades are there. The NBA potential is known.
But let’s not fast-forward until June just yet. He has five months of college basketball to play — and he’s walking into a situation in Durham with All-American and national championship expectations.
“It’s important for all of us to remember he’s 17,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer told ESPN earlier this month. “This is a process. But he’s not running from it, he’s not afraid of it. And he’s been just such a good guy to coach.”
To get a feel for his expected impact on the college game, we spoke to a handful of college coaches to get their impressions of the versatile forward, and how they might approach a matchup against Flagg and the Blue Devils.
“That’s why you fear him so much”
Flagg is one of the biggest storylines entering the 2024-25 college basketball season. He didn’t attend ACC Media Day earlier this month but was still a consistent topic of conversation.
Georgia Tech head coach Damon Stoudamire said, “he has a chance to be one of the special ones,” while NC State coach Kevin Keatts added, “When a guy’s got it, he’s got it.”
College coaches saw Flagg plenty of times when he was in high school level, facing the best competition on the Nike EYBL circuit or at Montverde or with USA Basketball. So nearly every coach already has a baseline evaluation of the star freshman.
“He impacts the game in so many ways that are really not controllable from a scouting standpoint,” one coach said. “That’s why you fear him so much in the college game.
“When you’re playing a guy that is so talented with the ball in his hands or such a dynamic shooter, you can at least maybe get to a point where you have strategy. But he’s all over the court in so many different ways. He’s so versatile. No matter what you try to do, he’s going to beat you in other ways.”
One coach pointed to Scottie Pippen as the most apt comparison for Flagg.
“He plays a very complete game,” he said. “Very versatile defender. Really can guard a number of different positions. Excellent shot-blocker and rim protector with his ability to get vertical. He has good instincts to get into passing lanes, good hands.
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Cooper Flagg hits a fadeaway and-1
Duke’s Cooper Flagg hits a fadeaway jumper while getting fouled.
“On the offensive end, he plays with a real competitiveness. He’s not concerned with how many points he scores. He wants to win. He can handle the ball, he can pass. Drives it well, hits the glass. And he’s spent time becoming a better shooter.”
Another coach who will face Duke this season said Flagg’s effectiveness when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands is what makes him such an elite prospect.
“His combination of feel for the game and high intensity … separates him from everyone else,” he said. “These other guys that are really good, they’re dominant with the ball in their hands or dominant with their back to the basket. Cooper is as good at slipping ball-screens or setting ball-screens as he is at using them. It’s going to be a problem either way: His off-ball cutting, his IQ of when to go. You can stick to him on cuts, he’s going to sniff out the perfect time and perfect angle to get a cut off.
“How many of us in college have had to prepare for an elite cutter?”
“The whole thing is going to translate”
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Duke’s Cooper Flagg pins a shot on the backboard
Cooper Flagg rises up for a big block to pin Freddie Young Jr.’s shot on the backboard.
While Flagg has an NBA-ready skillset, multiple college coaches said his intangibles give him such a high floor at the college level.
“It’s the passion that he displays. He plays hard, he plays to win. Those sorts of things can carry you in college games sometimes,” one coach said. “He has great size, he’s big, he’s almost 6-10… He can drive it, he can get on the glass, it’s his passing and his playmaking. But the thing that’s going to carry him the most is his relentlessness.”
Another coach added, “Whenever you get a freshman, there’s some sort of learning curve. His feel for the game is so high. He’s going to come in and be able to pick up so many things. It’s going to make Duke’s team so much better.”
Duke 🏀 (ACCNX) pic.twitter.com/YUVHFWGD3v
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) October 19, 2024
One coach who will face Duke before conference play begins fears Flagg’s off-ball defensive ability most.
“Everyone can guard the ball, but not everybody can be as instinctual off the ball as him,” he said. “From watching him in high school, he might be the best weakside defender, weakside shot-blocker, I’ve ever seen.
“We talk a lot about paint decisions. Usually you’re making a paint decision on a body. Shot-fake shots, pivoting, two-foot reads in the paint. But now your whole entire preparation when you get two feet in the paint is going to be wherever Cooper Flagg’s man is, he’s going to try to take off and block it. His ability to cover ground is so scary.”
When asked which part of Flagg’s game will work best in college, another coach said simply, “The whole thing is going to translate.”
“Teams game-planning specifically to him will be an adjustment”
Flagg’s lone perceived weakness — more of an inconsistency than a real weakness, really — has been his 3-point shooting. In reality, the numbers don’t quite bear that out. He shot 38% from beyond the arc at Montverde Academy last season, making more than one per game. Early word out of Duke has been positive for his shooting capabilities as well.
College coaches preparing for Flagg will be watching how he reacts to more complicated defenses and situations.
Quick Coop close out
14-11 😈 | 5 minutes in (ACCNX) pic.twitter.com/6eAlI0lB9F
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) October 19, 2024
“In college, you deal with different sorts of defenses. Zone, packed-in man-to-man,” one coach said. “Different things that will try to shrink the floor for him, force him to be in a situation where he becomes more of a jumpshooter. Teams game-planning specifically to him will be an adjustment. Some of that will be dependent on how guys around him play, because then it becomes harder to key in on him.
“And he’s not a guy who necessarily needs the ball in his hands the whole game. Even when it’s not a good shooting game for him and defenses are keyed in on him, he’ll get four or six points off of his defense, going to the offensive glass, cutting for a layup, taking a smaller guy into the post. He’ll find a way to impact the game.”
In high school, once Flagg got some momentum to get downhill off the dribble, his size and playmaking ability made defending him a nearly impossible task. With defenses more focused on keeping him from getting to the rim, how will he adjust?
“More than the shooting, it’s going to be a little bit of when to go, when not to go,” a coach of one early-season opponent said. “He’s going to get in the paint. And now he has to learn to make reads in the paint. For anyone who has dominated at such a high level in high school, that will be the hardest thing for him.”
“It’s going to be contain and pick your poison”
Coaches with Duke on their schedule — as well as coaches who aren’t expecting to face Duke — kept an eye on this past weekend’s exhibition game against Lincoln (Pennsylvania) and will watch Sunday’s exhibition against Arizona State. On Saturday, Flagg played 24 minutes and finished with 22 points on 8-for-16 shooting, making a pair of 3s and adding two rebounds and six assists. He also blocked four shots.
Some coaches are jotting down notes for the future.
“He really likes to go left. He’s much more comfortable going left than driving the ball right,” one coach said. “Teams are going to be sending him right as much as they can. Sometimes smaller guys on a big guy that likes to handle the ball … can get underneath him. In the past, that has shown him some challenges.
“Work him all over the court. Put him in positions defensively, where you’re moving him around. He plays with such a high commitment level, he’s not going to take possessions off. Use that to your advantage. Don’t allow him to get easy ones on the glass, force him to play in the halfcourt as much as you can, play him a little more as a jumpshooter.”
How Duke uses Flagg is obviously going to play a large part in how opponents plan against them. One opposing coach specifically mentioned Flagg’s size and mismatch ability.
“They’re going to move guys all over the court, but how much is he going to be used in post-up situations?” the coach said. “He’s so good at … driving [the ball] to the post, you have to know how to help, when to dig, what are your rotations like. I don’t think they’ll run a ton of sets with him in the post. But he might go perimeter to post and that’s really hard to double off of. We have to figure it out. How are you helping on him?”
A coach of a nonconference opponent said one potential idea he wants to instill in his players is to simply make everything crowded for Flagg: Be in the gaps, be at the rim, be in his field of vision.
“Always have a body on him. When he’s cutting, when he’s going to the glass,” he said. “He always has to see bodies. A big thing for us is going to be gap defense. He has to see a body in every gap. He has to see a body at the rim. He’s so long, he’s so smooth. If he doesn’t see a body, he’s taking that crack and then exposing you at the rim or by passing. When he has a live dribble, he has to see a body.”
Another coach said trying to take too many things away won’t make too much of an impact though.
“I don’t think you can get crazy with sending him left or right or whatever else you’re trying to do,” he said. “With a kid that good, it’s going to be, contain and pick your poison. He’s just too talented for the other stuff. And with the way [Duke is] built, the shooting around him, the rim scoring they have, it’s going to be hard to put your focus on just stopping him.”