SAN ANTONIO — With Duke’s coaches and players looking on as freshman Cooper Flagg was named The Associated Press National Player of the Year on Friday, the news conference was awash in well-earned praise for a player who has exceeded super-sized hype and forced commenters to exhaust superlatives.
But with Flagg poised to take the sport’s grandest stage Saturday in the national semifinals, one question looms: Does he need to win the national title to cement his legacy as the best freshman of the modern era?
The 6-foot-9, 205-pound Flagg — equipped with an exceptionally high basketball IQ, fluid offensive moves and strong anticipatory instincts, especially for an 18-year-old — already is in rarified company as only the fourth freshman to earn AP Player of the Year honors. But there is an even more prestigious fraternity in reach: Scroll through your memories to recall other scintillating freshmen, from Patrick Ewing’s shot-blocking to Kenny Anderson’s dribbling, from Kevin Durant’s scoring to Zion Williamson’s indomitable force. Only two freshmen — Syracuse’s Carmelo Anthony and Kentucky’s Anthony Davis — have led their teams to national titles.
Asked where Flagg ranks among the best freshmen he has seen the last half-century, Anthony’s former coach, Jim Boeheim, quickly digested the question while standing on the Alamodome court — and didn’t hesitate.
“He’s as good as any freshman I’ve seen,” Boeheim told Hoops HQ, before shrugging off any notion that Flagg needs a national title for his legacy. “Then Ernie Banks wasn’t a great player? John Stockton and Karl Malone are top 50 all time — they didn’t win, they had to go against (Michael) Jordan. It’s just the way it is. It’s the team you are on.”
Flagg has exceeded outsized expectations at every level, from leading Florida-based Montverde Academy to the mythical national prep title, to impressing the U.S. Olympic team while playing on the U.S. Select Team last summer, to leading Duke in scoring (18.9 points per game), rebounding (7.5 per game), assists (4.2 per game) and steals (1.4 per game) this season.
“He’s really special, and he really should be a high school senior, which makes him even more impressive,” St. John’s coach Rick Pitino told Hoops HQ on Friday. “He’s as good as I’ve seen in quite some time. I’d certainly put him up with some of the best, and he’s going to have a great pro career.”
ESPN analyst Jay Bilas told Hoops HQ that Flagg belongs “right at the top” of any list of best freshmen in modern history, even surpassing the abilities of Grant Hill as a freshman on Duke’s 1990-91 national championship season. Whether Flagg can equal Hill’s pro career is a different discussion, Bilas said.
But to be clear, he stressed, a national championship is not a requisite to secure Flagg’s place in college basketball history.
“Unless you think Kevin Durant needed one,” Bilas said. “If he wins a championship, that kind of ends a lot of discussion for those interested in facile interpretation. It’s like the discussion with Tiger (Woods) and Jack (Nicklaus), and they say, ‘Until Tiger gets to 18 (majors), we can’t even discuss it.’ So all you have to do is be able to count? It’s a little more nuanced than that. I don’t see how you can watch him (Flagg) all year and say he’s not up with those guys (Anthony, Davis, Durant) — he is.”
Consider the perspective of Jay Wright, who won two national titles as Villanova’s coach. Asked if a national title is needed for Flagg’s legacy, Wright, now a CBS Sports analyst, scoffed.
“Not in my eyes,” Wright told Hoops HQ. “But the public and the media usually view you that way. Unfortunately, I think they do. But not in my eyes, not if I was an NBA guy. His basketball IQ and his ability to play every possession is something you have to teach even young NBA guys. He’s got it now — that’s what’s amazing.”
Flagg’s talents can’t be boiled down to merely what he can do in the scoring column, as it (largely) was for Durant, who averaged 25.8 points per game at Texas in 2006-07. With Flagg, the devil is very much in the details.
As Bilas said, Flagg distinguishes himself with his heart (competitive drive) and his head (basketball IQ).
The distinguishing feature, Wright said, is Flagg’s mature approach to the game – playing defense, making the right pass, playing every possession, “the way he’ll chase someone down in transition and block a shot. His ability to play every possession at such a young age is the most impressive thing that separates him from all the other greats.”
Because of his versatility, Boeheim likened Flagg to Hill at Duke, adding that his star freshman, Anthony, “was a better shooter, probably a better rebounder. But Cooper is a playmaker. Carmelo was a scorer. Carmelo as a freshman was capable of taking his team the whole way, the first freshman to do it.”
But Anthony — and Davis on Kentucky’s freshman-laden title team in 2012 — soon may have company.
While striving to improve all season, no detail has been too small for Flagg to pinpoint.
Justin Robinson, Duke’s director of player development, told Hoops HQ that Flagg embodies the program’s emphasis on the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which stresses 1 percent improvement each day. Robinson recalled an early-season film session with Flagg in which the then-17-year-old wanted to conduct a deep dive into why some rebounds were bouncing over his head. Turned out, he was over-running — guarding on the perimeter, then sprinting too close to the basket to get some rebounds that would go long.
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“He’s come to a better understanding of positioning, where you can hold off your guy and you can always come back in to get the ball,” Robinson said. “Details like that — he soaks it up.”
Fellow Duke freshman Kon Knueppel, a potential NBA lottery pick in his own right, told Hoops HQ that he’s most impressed with Flagg’s anticipation on both ends of the court. “Jumping passing lanes, seeing plays before they happen and anticipating open teammates on the offensive end,” he said.
If Flagg is to cap his one season at Duke with a title, it won’t be an easy path. He will have to overcome the nation’s best defense (Houston) as well as another No. 1 seed — either Florida or Auburn — from arguably the strongest conference (SEC) in the history of the sport.
Houston coach Kelvin Sampson recalled that while at Oklahoma, he coached against Syracuse’s Anthony in an Elite Eight loss in 2003. From Gary Payton and Jason Kidd to Sean Elliott and T.J. Ford, Sampson coached against a slew of elite freshmen over the past four decades.
“This guy is right there with all of ’em,” Sampson said. “His floor is really good at everything. His ceiling is his size, finishes with his left hand around the paint, right hand, has a floater, can make a three. Really good free throw shooter. If you double him, you better get there quick because he can pass.”
As Alabama coach Nate Oats said before an Elite Eight loss to Duke: “He’s as good a passer as he is a scorer. … He’s also one of those guys that — I mean, you’re not going to hold him down to 10 points. That’s just not happening.”
The self-effacing Flagg attributes his confidence on the court to endless hours in the gym, saying, “Putting in the hours, you just trust that. It comes from game experience, being in the moments and trusting what you’ve done to get to where you are.”
One point of emphasis Duke coach Jon Scheyer has stressed all season is for Flagg not to defer. He has wanted his prized freshman to “fully be him.”
A college basketball journey that has just one or two more games remaining began some four years ago, when Brian Scalabrine, the former 11-year NBA veteran, made Scheyer aware of a 14-year-old dominating college players in New England pick-up games. Scalabrine told Scheyer that Flagg was a “no-brainer.”
When Scheyer watched Flagg in person for the first time when he competed in the NIKE EYBL Peach Jam at age 15, Scheyer recalls saying, “‘Scal’ was right.”
“It took me about 90 seconds,” Scheyer said. “From there, it was all out (recruitment). Started to build a relationship — and the rest is history.”
And one more chapter remains this weekend to punctuate how Flagg will be remembered in college basketball history.
