DeCourcy On Cooper Flagg’s Game

He finds it sublime and he’s right

Duke has played eight games so far and we’re starting to get an idea of just what sort of a player Cooper Flagg is.

Mike DeCourcy has a pretty good idea. You won't necessarily see a dominant scoring performance every night, but there’s really nothing he can't do on a basketball court.

The thing to us is that while his talent and focus are his own, a lot of what he is and how he plays is because of the long road trips his parents took him and his brothers on for AAU competition (they had to go to Boston because there just aren't many people in Maine and correspondingly few high-level players).

And while the kids sat in the back of the van, they watched video of the 1986 Celtics and Flagg absorbed the ethos of that greatest of teams. That team was built around Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson and, of course, Larry Bird.

When you watch video of that team, what you see is pure basketball. Everyone defends, everyone tries to get the best shot, everyone passes beautifully.

You can kind of imagine Cooper and his twin brother Ace just absorbing the brilliance and then going out and trying to apply the lessons.

Flagg isn’t trying to be Bird or anyone else. He has his own unique package of skills. And as DeCourcy points out, Flagg can affect the game in almost any way he chooses, or, to put it better, in whatever way he can help his team the best. Not many players have ever been able to do that.

There are really only a few things that Flagg needs to work on. First is to be stronger. He’s just 17 and doesn’t have a man’s strength. Time will fix that.

Second, his three point shooting isn’t where it might be. That’ll get better over time too, because Flagg is a worker. He’ll get it done.

And third, he doesn’t fully understand when to go into takeover mode. He’s 17 and leads his team in scoring, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. But like young LeBron James, he’ll have to learn when and how to seize a game by the throat.

But we’re already seeing signs of it. Watching his brilliance emerge is a great privilege. We hope everyone appreciates what we’re seeing.