NBA Draft: Why 18-year-old Cooper Flagg is ready to lead the Dallas Mavericks - Yahoo Sports

Three summers ago, Cooper Flagg took on his biggest challenge yet. The 15-year-old from small-town Maine traveled to USA Basketball headquarters in Colorado Springs to compete against older, more heralded prospects for a spot on the U17 national team.

Whereas many other players at the tryout hunted their own shots in an effort to stand out from their peers, Flagg refused to succumb to the temptation to hoist contested jumpers or step-back 3s. He showcased his talents in other ways, as a willing passer, instinctive cutter, versatile defender, dogged rebounder and supportive teammate.

Forty-six prospects were invited to USA Basketball’s junior national team minicamp that year. Thirty-four earned the opportunity to try out for the team that would vie for gold at the FIBA U17 World Cup. Flagg not only made the 12-man roster, he also posted an absurd 10 points, 17 rebounds, 8 steals, 4 blocks and 2 assists in a gold-medal game victory over talented Spain.

“It was incredible to be there firsthand and see him win over NBA scouts and USA Basketball people session by session,” Andy Bedard, Flagg’s AAU coach since he was 10 years old, told Yahoo Sports. “There were six or seven sessions before they made the cut. I thought he was the best player on the floor in five or six of those sessions. He was the most mature one out there and he was the only one without a driver’s license.”

Stories like that exemplify why those in Flagg’s circle are convinced he’s ready for the unusual burden that comes with the Dallas Mavericks selecting him No. 1 overall in Wednesday’s NBA Draft. Instead of joining a bottom-tier franchise that can afford to develop young players slowly, Flagg goes to a veteran team built to win right away, one that’s counting on him as a savior after trading away Luka Dončić last February in a stunning blockbuster.

Filling Dončić's size 16 Nikes is a lot to ask of the NBA’s youngest No. 1 overall pick in 22 years, a teen phenom who won’t turn 19 until December. And yet Flagg has consistently made the improbable look easy throughout his comet-like rise from the obscurity of central Maine to the national spotlight.

At 16, he turned down offers to play for powerhouse AAU programs and guided a group of his childhood friends from Maine to the Nike Peach Jam title game. At 17, he earned the respect of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and the rest of the U.S. Olympic team with an impressive showing during a scrimmage in Las Vegas. At 18, he exceeded impossibly high expectations for his lone college season, leading Duke to the Final Four and capturing all but one of the major national player of the year awards.

“Cooper is just wired different,” his longtime trainer, Matt Mackenzie, told Yahoo Sports. “He thrives in situations where he has pressure, where there are expectations placed upon him, where he has to prove that he is who people think he is. For him to be drafted No. 1, I can’t think of anyone more deserving, but I also can’t think of anyone more fit to handle it.”

It’s no surprise to anyone who watches basketball that Flagg was the first player selected on Wednesday night. That has been the inevitable outcome since long before he donned a Duke jersey and led the Blue Devils in every major statistical category.

As recently as a few months ago, few would have guessed Flagg would have been wearing a Dallas Mavericks cap as he strutted across the Barclays Center stage. Dončić led the Mavs to the 2024 NBA Finals. They were expected to contend again this past season before the Slovenian sensation missed time with lingering injuries and fell out of favor with general manager Nico Harrison.

Flagg and his Duke teammates were hanging after a home win over rival North Carolina in early February when freshman guard Darren Harris checked social media and recoiled in disbelief. The Mavericks had just traded Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, Harris informed the rest of the Blue Devils.

“We just all started going crazy,” Flagg told reporters on Tuesday. “It was such a shock to hear that.”

Little did Flagg know at the time that the stunning trade would help determine his NBA future. The Mavericks slipped from eighth place in the Western Conference when they traded Dončić to 10th when the regular season ended. A loss in the play-in tournament cemented their place in the draft lottery. Then they overcame long odds to secure the No. 1 pick.

The decision to ship out an immensely popular perennial All-NBA candidate instantly turned Harrison into a target for backlash and vitriol. “Fire Nico!” chants from frustrated fans were a staple of Mavericks games the rest of the season. In Dončić's first game back in Dallas, he scored 45 points and received thunderous ovations from the American Airlines Center crowd.

When asked Tuesday about the possibility of going to Dallas and having to try to match the standard Dončić set, Flagg insisted he doesn’t see it that way.

“Some people would say it’s pressure following Luka,” Flagg said. “I wouldn’t look at anything as pressure. I think whatever situation I go into, I’m just going to try and be myself all the time and push myself to be better and better every day.”

That approach certainly has worked for Flagg so far.

Over his final 25 games at Duke, Flagg averaged 20.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.4 blocks while shooting 45.1% from behind the 3-point arc. He entered the NBA Draft as one of the most highly touted prospects of his era, surpassed only by Victor Wembanyama and perhaps Zion Williamson.

One of the few blemishes on Flagg’s resume is the painful way his lone season at Duke ended. The Blue Devils lost to Houston in the national semifinals after coughing up leads of 59-45 with 8:17 left, 64-55 with 3:03 left and 67-61 with less than a minute to go.

Flagg had one chance to flip the narrative, one chance to salvage Duke’s flickering title hopes in the final seconds. The short pull-up jumper that Flagg attempted is one that he has hit dozens of times. That time, he left it short.

To Mackenzie, the takeaway from that agonizing sequence is not the miss but rather Flagg’s mentality.

“He certainly wishes he could replay it, but he also knows it’s part of the journey,” Mackenzie said. “He’s never going to shy away from the big moment just because they don’t all work out in his favor. He wants to play in those big games. He wants the ball in his hands. He understands that being a player of his caliber comes with a lot of responsibility.”

There’s a burden associated with being anointed basketball’s next rising star.

At just 18 years old, Flagg is ready to embrace it.