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Cooper Flagg’s first test in the Association came faster than expected.
Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd wanted to throw him right into the fire at the very first Summer League game in Las Vegas, looking to feature Flagg at the same point guard position that Kidd had played during his Hall of Fame career, which, coincidentally, also began in Dallas.
Kidd wanted to make him “uncomfortable” and “see how he reacts being able to run the show,” he says.
“He wanted me to test myself and do a lot of new things,” says Flagg. “Be comfortable bringing the ball up and initiating offense in different actions. That was really the main thing. He wanted to test me and get [me] comfortable handling the ball and handling the pressure.”
The two-game window gave a glimpse into the grand expectations for Flagg’s rookie season and how his jack-of-all-trades skill set, years advanced for an 18-year-old, just might fit seamlessly on a veteran-laden Mavs team featuring future Hall of Famers.
As he has throughout his young career, Flagg brings a poise, confidence and versatility to the NBA that makes him one of the most anticipated pro prospects in recent history.
“I think he’s the most versatile player that I have ever seen, in terms of his ability to really adapt and fit to whatever the team’s needs are,” says his mom, Kelly Flagg.
He showcased his ability to impact the game from all over the floor, draining threes, finding teammates and leading fast breaks on the fly. With the ball in his hands for 31 minutes per game, he only had three total turnovers.
“It kind of is what it is and you’re able to translate,” Cooper explains. “You do what you can do and just play your own game and be confident in everything that you’re doing.”
Part of that confidence to do anything asked of him stems from his single season at Duke, where he was given the freedom to feel out the floor and the flow of the offense as he saw fit.
“Having Coach [Jon] Scheyer’s trust in me,” Flagg says, “having that usage and him putting the ball in my hands a lot and letting me make decisions really helped my game to grow a lot in the area of making plays for myself and for others.”
It’s one thing to throw on the thinner template team uni in Las Vegas, where his game-worn Mavs jersey became the most expensive Summer League jersey ever sold, setting an auction record for $95,250. It’s another to think ahead to when he’ll be sitting inside the Dallas locker room in American Airlines Center in late October, staring at the embroidered lettering of his official Mavericks jersey for his pro debut.
“It’s going to be a surreal feeling,” anticipates Flagg.
As he switched out of his Draft suit and into a tan jacket, jeans and New Balances, Cooper threw on an iced out No. 32 pendant chain, officially signaling a return to the jersey number he’d worn in middle and high school.
The number is a tribute to his mom who wore No. 32 throughout her playing days. A 5-10 starting power forward for the University of Maine in the late ’90s, Kelly was known for her post moves, competitive fire and love for the Larry Bird and Kevin McHale-led ’80s Celtics.
The youngest of the three Flagg brothers—his twin, Ace, was born a minute earlier—Cooper gets his laidback off-court vibe and height from his 6-9 father Ralph, says the family. The competitive fire comes from mom.
“I’m definitely more the I don’t like to lose mentality,” says Kelly. “I’m more…win at all costs.”
If Cooper thought going first felt “surreal” and like a “dream come true,” the Mavs felt just as fortunate. GM Nico Harrison called it “an amazing day for the fans of Dallas, for the city of Dallas and also for the franchise.”
With just 1.8 percent lottery odds, it was a day Dallas didn’t exactly anticipate heading into the Draft Lottery.
“Us not thinking we would have a chance to draft him, I didn’t put much stock into it,” Harrison would later admit. “It was more of a dream.”
Just before the lottery process, the family had a wide-ranging discussion about a handful of potential lottery teams that could end up getting the first pick.
“We never once discussed Dallas,” reveals Kelly. “It wasn’t a conversation we had.”
As it turned out, with Philly, San Antonio, Dallas and Charlotte all on the board down the stretch—all “good spots,” per the family convo—it was a Mavericks franchise looking to immediately contend that they’d be heading to.
“We couldn’t have been more excited,” she recalls. "We were really, really thrilled.”
The first time that a young Cooper Flagg appeared on the @ResultsBasketball Instagram page was a week after the NBA season was halted due to the pandemic in March of 2020.
Trainer Matt MacKenzie had asked his local players to each conduct a simple drill for a helpful train-from-home compilation video he wanted to put together and post online. A 13-year-old Cooper pops up 10 drills in, wearing a Celtics shirt. Seated on the court, he alternates dribbling on each side, while also doing sit-ups.
“He didn’t mind the work—in fact, he craved the work,” MacKenzie says of Cooper’s early training sessions.
A few months later, just before his 14th birthday, Cooper can be seen in a video on the page sprinting from the baseline to close out on a corner shooter, before cutting back to the hoop for a feed and finishing with a dunk, then repeating the drill out to each corner and back.
It’s in this clip that he’s wearing a royal blue Mavericks shirt. It was less about the viral foreshadowing and Dallas destiny that social media made it out to be heading into the Draft—he simply forgot an extra shirt for practice and asked his older buddy Ethan to lend him some gear.
As both he and Ace continued to work with MacKenzie over the next year, the twins were soon terrorizing the AAU scene as 8th graders. Cooper was also taking notice of the noise.
“Oh, they’re from Maine,” the then-14-year-old says, parroting the doubters. “Are they really gonna be the players they look like on YouTube videos?”
The following summer, as MacKenzie’s business grew, he moved his Eastern Maine Sports Academy to a new, multi-use 28,000-square-foot center with even more space for the Flagg boys to get after it. A specific yet random sequence on what was yet another spring day in the gym sticks out. MacKenzie was running guys through a “DHO Live Reads” drill.
After catching a handoff on the left wing from future Princeton wing Landon Clark, Cooper takes an immediate two dribbles right toward the key before throwing an over-the-shoulder swing pass out to the left corner back to a re-locating Clark. As his drillmate cashes the shot to win the drill, Flagg instantly screams, flexes and then yells again.
The seemingly simple play from a 15-year-old summed up his game perfectly.
He made the right read, the right slash, the right pass. He was hyped for his teammate’s success. He impacted winning, even if it was a 2-on-2 drill with six-second constraints. That burning competitive fire has been a key element of his game at every stage.
“For me, it’s just loving to win, loving the competition,” says Flagg. “I’ve always wanted to win, more than anything else. It stems from there.”
As Kelly remembers, Cooper has been that competitive all his life.
“Pretty much out of the womb,” she says with a laugh.
One of the first things Kelly remembers Cooper competing at was dance-offs against his brothers, when the family would throw on Just Dance Kids DVDs and “compete.” He was 4.
“He really didn’t like losing, especially to Ace,” she adds. “He always took winning very seriously. It was in everything that he did.”
When Kelly rounded up the Flagg boys to trek around Maine for practices, first it was a minivan with a DVD player, and later it was a “gold mist” Chevy Suburban with screens in the headrests. This is the basketball that you want to watch, she remembers thinking, as they watched YouTube mixes or DVDs of the ’86 Boston Celtics and late 2000s Celtics on the drive.
“When he was learning to shoot, he was taking influences from some of his favorite players like Kevin Durant and Larry Bird,” says Kelly. “We talked about a high release point and how it’s tough to be blocked.”
“There are certain things, or certain games, that you can visualize and see what you want to get better at,” says Flagg.
It’s an advanced approach for someone well into their NBA career—let alone an 18-year-old. The foundational and fundamental elements of his game have always been there. The agility, open-court speed and awareness are prototypical pro pieces. He’s carried his broad shoulders with a presence in any gym since he was a teenager. There’s a confidence about his game that never seems to be rattled.
“That comes with playing the right way,” Cooper says. “Playing hard all the time. Competing as hard as I can every time I’m on the court. It’s always just been about getting better all around. There’s so much you can work on and get better at. I just try to get better all around, all the time.”
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If his freshman year at Nokomis Regional High School and eventual move to Montverde Academy was any indication, Cooper has always looked for the largest challenge at every stage of his hoops journey.
“If you’re the best player in the gym, then find another gym,” goes an adage his mom would often repeat.
Flagg wanted to not only play against a top national schedule all season long but also practice against future DI players every day. Anticipating another dominant year ahead of his second season at Montverde in 2023, the family discussed the lofty possibility of Cooper skipping his senior season, reclassifying a year up and joining the 2024 high school class.
“He had gone to some Duke camps over that summer and been playing with that whole group from the 2024 graduating class that would be the 2024-25 team,” says his father Ralph. “He just enjoyed it and called us after one of the camps and said, I think I want to do this.”
With an accelerated class schedule on track all along, Flagg was on pace to fully graduate and pull off the reclass.
Ten days after officially reclassifying, he was starring in the SLAM Summer Classic at Rucker Park and making one of the most viral clips of his entire high school run.
“It was a cool experience,” says Flagg. “You’re outside in New York, right in the middle of it.”
Down 3 and with three seconds on the clock, he commanded the ball off of an inbounds pass. Cooper pump faked, took one dribble out and cashed a leaning three from the left wing at the buzzer, sending the Classic into overtime as fans stormed the court. Posted online by the NBA’s official accounts, the shot got millions of impressions across platforms. He was 16.
“There was a lot of energy,” he remembers.
Ever since, a batch of YouTube mixes have lived on, cementing the game with the embellished headline: “Cooper Flagg Drops 60 At The Rucker.”
“Ian Jackson had the most,” Kelly clarifies.
“I had like 60, I think,” Cooper jokes.
“The legend grows,” Kelly says with a laugh.
With great talent on the court comes great opportunity off the court.
Before even playing in an official NBA regular-season game, Flagg has already captured a collection of landmark endorsement deals, leading to one of the League’s largest portfolios of brand partners.
“It’s pretty cool,” he says humbly. “I’m learning a lot, and I got really educated about it at an earlier age than people have previously, with the whole NIL thing.”
While Cooper was at Montverde, the state of Florida hadn’t yet allowed amateur players to sign NIL deals, which Kelly now calls a “blessing in disguise.”
“All of those guys got to just go hoop and worry about basketball,” she says. “Which is what we wanted.”
Once he committed to Duke and signed with Austin Brown, Co-Head of CAA Sports, though, the endorsement offers were never-ending. While the Fanatics, Gatorade and AT&T partner deals all eventually came together, the biggest brand decision to sort out was the sneaker deal.
Even though Cooper had worn Nike throughout high school, the family had a unique connection to New Balance, the privately-owned company also hailing from the Northeast. Known for its “Made in USA Collection” and web of factories throughout the region, New Balance had a manufacturing facility in Skowhegan, just a 25-minute drive from Newport. Kelly would often take the boys to the annual tent sale to buy them shoes for the new school year.
With Flagg playing just a couple of hours from New Balance’s Boston headquarters, the company’s president, Chris Davis, and head of basketball sports marketing, Naveen Lokesh, remember having him on their radar early. As they tracked his progress at Montverde, SLAM’s issue No. 247 soon landed on Davis’ desk in the fall of 2023, announcing Cooper’s commitment to Duke and laying out the timeline of his earned rise through the ranks.
Davis walked across the office and threw the issue onto Lokesh’s desk, declaring, “Cooper has to be a New Balance guy.”
“The SLAM cover story was validation of everything that we had been thinking, learning and ideating,” Davis says now. “Sometimes, everything that you think is going to come true is right in front of you. It was the cherry on top and the ultimate validator.”
“New Balance feels like a family and not a giant corporate machine, even though they’re a big company,” describes Kelly. “They’re family owned and they’re accessible. Whenever he needs anything, he can just reach out. It has a very close-knit feel to it.”
Of course, Chris Davis remembers exactly where he was when he got the official update. It was June 24th at Fenway Park, with the Red Sox taking on the Blue Jays, and Davis was seated in a suite with Boston execs. He noticed his phone begin to flash.
“If you don’t have someone’s number,” begins Davis, “you know how it says, Maybe…? It said Maybe: Cooper Flagg.’”
He picked it up.
“He’s a really polite kid,” Davis thought in the moment. “He’s calling to tell me he’s going to a different brand.”
“Hey Mr. Davis…”
“Just call me Chris. Mr. Davis is my dad.”
Cooper got right to it and let him know that he wanted to join New Balance.
“I got off the phone and I had chills,” reflects Davis.
Flagg knew it’d be the biggest brand decision of his young career. “It was a process—a long process,” says Cooper. “Meeting with different brands and seeing the vision that they had for me and my brand. New Balance being a New England brand was definitely a big part of it, and the vision and the culture that they have.”
Right away, even while at Duke, he was featured in the brand’s national campaign touting its lineup of top basketball athletes. New Balance declared June 25th as “Flagg Day,” launching a capsule collection of “Made in USA” apparel to celebrate the draft. Cooper is expected to headline the Hesi Low model to start his rookie season, with eventual PE editions expected to release, and maybe one day, even his own signature sneaker.
“It does take a unique individual and a unique personality to partner with a challenger brand,” adds Davis. “Especially for the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft and one of the most touted prospects in recent history. To not go with one of the industry incumbents, you have to have a fearlessly independent mindset.”
As he and New Balance get going to build out his marketing plans and future vision, Flagg feels his story can relate to anyone and make an impact.
“I think the way that I represent myself on the court,” he says. “Just playing hard all the time and always being about winning first and team first is something that can send a good message to a lot of people.”
Not long after touring around Dallas, Cooper picked out his apartment. That was the formality of settling into his new city. More importantly, he wanted to get to the Mavs practice facility.
“When can I go? When can I start?”
Considering his actual age group is just now transitioning to college, the reclass move sped up his timeline across the board. The move to the Mavs means that Cooper will be surrounded by an accomplished veteran roster that has played in over 500 playoff games.
“I’m excited to be surrounded by a lot of older, experienced guys who have had success winning at the highest level,” says Flagg. "It’s going to be really cool to learn from them, be a sponge and soak it all up to learn a lot.”
“There’s no better situation for him to learn the game on and off the floor,” says Kidd.
It’s not lost on Cooper or his parents that he’s in a rare situation as a No. 1 pick, landing with a contending team, rather than being the face of a rebuilding roster.
“We’re in win-now mode, so he adds to that,” beamed Mavs GM Nico Harrison at Flagg’s press conference. “But he’s also the future of the franchise. You get two in one, so to speak.”
During a promo video shot before the draft with Chime, the Mavs’ jersey sponsor, Cooper and his mom each were asked how much they’d pay for a rare Cooper Flagg rookie card.
Cooper lands on $2.5 million, making sure to emphasize that it’d be a “good investment.”
One dollar, Kelly says matter-of-factly.
“You better give me one,” she jokes, before pausing. “Make sure you’re not a bust first.”
With all of the hype and expectation that comes with being the No. 1 pick, in today’s world, there’s just as much chatter across social media when players don’t perform.
“We see what trolls say online…He’s gonna be a bust, and this and that,” begins Kelly. “Of course I have to tease him and make light of it a little bit. I know he’s not and I know he’s going to do great things. At the same time, I know I have to keep him humble and keep it real with him. He does have to prove himself, and he will.”
Within the details of Dallas’ revamped roster that has high expectations—a team with switchable wings, perimeter shooting and a defensive identity that Harrison and Kidd have stressed—there will be times when Flagg fits in and impacts the game. Some nights, it’ll be his defense and playmaking. Other nights, he’ll be asked to take on more scoring. When he feeds a hot teammate all game, he’s doing so knowing a sacrificial stat line may lead to the greater good.
“Game in and game out, that might look different for them,” says Kelly. “He’s OK to sacrifice his own stats for the win. That’s the biggest thing about him. He will do whatever it takes…Usually when you play that way and that’s your mindset, you end up OK.”
As he realized when he first started watching classic NBA games on car rides to practice years ago, his rookie season in Dallas should look like the basketball that he’s wanted to play all along.
Cooper is looking ahead with more measured ways of describing how he’ll make his mark to start. He’s “excited,” willing to work, get better every day and ultimately help the team win in any way that he can. While she loves to joke, tease and “keep him humble” at times, his mom sees a future where all of the intangibles he brings, all of the skills he’s looked to sharpen over time, all come together in Dallas right out the gate.
“I hope that the city of Dallas falls in love with him the way that we love and adore him,” says Kelly. “I think the city of Dallas will raise him up as well, because they’re going to see how hard he plays and that he plays the right way.”
For those fans in Dallas—and Newport and Montverde and Durham, and the whole country, really—October 22, 2025 can’t come soon enough.
Let the Cooper Flagg era begin.
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