Not until four days before Christmas will Cooper Flagg reach his 17th birthday, which makes him the very definition of a throwback player.
Young people don’t often graduate high school at such a young age now — and that’s doubly true when the young person in question happens to play basketball at an elite level. Even with all the players who “reclassify” to enter college before originally planned, as Flagg did in August, most of them are winding up on campus with the ability to vote on Election Day.
So we can expect Flagg will be one of the youngest first-round draft picks ever. He’ll be somewhere around 18 years, 185 days, or three days younger than LeBron James was as the No. 1 overall pick in 2003. And it’s quite possible Flagg will be the youngest first-rounder to have spent a year in college.
That year will be spent at Duke, where he figures to be the true jewel of of another outstanding, recruiting class. The No. 1 player in the 2024 class according to multiple scouting outlets chose the Devils over reigning NCAA champion Connecticut and joins a group that already includes five-star wings Isaiah Evans of Huntersville, N.C., and Kon Knueppel of Milwaukee.
MORE: Who is Cooper Flagg? Meet the NBA Draft prospect & high school phenom
If it is Flagg’s age that makes him uncommon, though, it’s his talent that matters most. Flagg is the best American basketball prospect in more than a decade, but it’s not because he’s got so much more time to grow. He’s the best since Anthony Davis entered Kentucky in the fall of 2011 because he’s that damned good.
Ever since Flagg made the USA Basketball team that competed at the FIBA U17 World Cup – at 15, Flagg put the “under” in “under-17” – and was the best player for the gold-medal squad, the possibilities for his future in the game seemed almost without limit.
In the gold medal game against Spain, Flagg delivered 10 points, 17 rebounds and four blocks. For the tournament, he shot 42.9 percent on 3-pointers. He led the team with 10 rebounds per game. On average, he was a plus-24, second only to the plus-25.3 of point guard Jeremy Fears.
A 6-8 small forward from Newport, Maine, Flagg moved to Florida to play for Kevin Boyle at Montverde Academy following his freshman year of high school. He recently appeared in a preseason event contested at Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas and televised by ESPN, scoring 16 points in the first half on 7-of-8 shooting that almost entirely consisted of jumpers off the bounce. That performance included 11 rebounds, 7 assists and 4 blocks.
He has demonstrated a remarkable command of offensive basketball without making the game about himself. Defensively, he is quick enough to cover multiple positions and owns an astonishing knack for blocking shots for a player his size.
We say “almost without limit” because it’s going to take someone truly magical for us to conceive of him having a better career than LeBron. The game’s greatest player need not be the standard, though. It would be progress for American basketball if Flagg gradually can turn his potential into dominance, in the way that once seemed routine for this country’s best young talent.
When it was Magic Johnson or Isiah Thomas or Patrick Ewing or, later on, Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber or Kobe Bryant, it was more unusual for the best prospects to not grow into the greatest players. To not become exceptional was the exception.
This has not been true for a while now.
So many of the most productive American pros now are well into their 30s: Steph Curry, LeBron James, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard.
Over the past five seasons, we have seen how dramatically the impact of elite American prospects on the NBA has declined. Of the 75 positions on the All-NBA teams from 2019-2023, only 30 were filled by players who went through American high schools (and colleges) since 2010. And only 19 of those 30 positions were filled by players who left high school as five-star prospects.
There were nearly as many four-stars and unknowns, players such as Damian Lillard, Ja Morant and Jimmy Butler, who were largely overlooked until they became exceptional college players.
So many of the players that recently have become dominant in the NBA were developed through European basketball. Not all of them were obvious sensations, either. Giannis Antetokounmpo was the 15th overall pick of the 2013 NBA Draft. Reigning NBA MVP Nikola Jokic was the 41st overall pick a year later.
They are magnificent players, and the NBA is so much better for the ability of other nations to contribute superstars to its stage. The nation that produces the largest number of the league's players, though, ought to be still proficient at generating the largest number of its stars.
Players who develop as Jayson Tatum has in the half-dozen years since playing one season at Duke have become disappointingly rare. One can endeavor to blame this decline on “AAU”, but the fact is James, Durant, Curry and Harden -- and other stars who’ve aged out of the league -- all went through competing in those summer tournaments.
Something else has been missing, almost without exception, for a decade’s worth of top-10 players who either haven’t made it or haven’t made it big. Failing to become a star is not failing, mind you. Marvin Bagley will earn $37.5 million over the life of his current three-year contract. Josh Jackson made $27.5 million in his NBA career, even though he never was able to translate his exorbitant dynamism into productive play.
The game is better, though, when the greatest talents become the greatest players. Flagg has raised our hopes basketball will run back in that direction, soon.
