NEWPORT, Maine — Within the calm moments — the few there are — snow slithers sideways throughout the northbound lanes of I-95. It’s virtually sleek how the flurries snake proper to left, passengers on each random gust of wind. Nearly. However then the gusts turn into punches, pummeling and whipping the edges of this poor grey Nissan Altima. Windshield wipers are working time beyond regulation, and it takes each little bit of front-wheel drive to remain aligned with the 2 skinny tire tracks within the far proper lane. And straight forward, you see … nothing. The grey horizon swallows every thing, even the tops of the hovering pines that body the freeway.
It’s like being inside a fiercely shaken snow globe.
Instantly, amidst the whiteout, a typical inexperienced roadside signal seems: Exit 157. This complete trek — 100 miles north of Portland, previous a number of “Moose Warning” indicators — is to go to this tiny intersection. “Blink,” stated longtime resident Josh Grant, “and also you’ll miss it.”
Skate up the overpass to a cease signal; to the appropriate is the native taxidermist, and never a lot else — so veer left, and welcome to Newport. Inhabitants: about 3,000. The primary thoroughfare known as Moosehead Path, however there’s no cutesy downtown with boutique outlets or mom-and-pop eating places.
There are two fuel stations, just a few fast-food joints — Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin’ — a pharmacy, an ice cream store, and two marijuana dispensaries. Across the nook there’s a Walmart, and within the car parking zone, a log cabin that serves because the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce.
A couple of roads over, on a snowy road the plows haven’t reached, 10 homes down on the left, there’s a brown two-story, with the remnants of a basketball hoop on the left aspect of a curving driveway.
That is the place Cooper Flagg, the perfect highschool basketball participant in America, was raised. Cooper’s enrolling at Duke subsequent season, earlier than doubtless changing into the No. 1 decide within the 2025 NBA Draft. At 17, the 6-foot-9 ahead already has been named a McDonald’s All-American, the MVP of the annual NBA Gamers Affiliation top-100 camp, and an all-star on the 2022 FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup, which he helped the US win.
A local Mainer hasn’t been drafted in 40 years, not for the reason that New Jersey Nets chosen Jeff Turner in 1984. But by some means, this city — “a spot for folks going different locations,” as resident Earl Anderson calls it — has bred one among basketball’s brightest rising stars.
Maine has just one Division I program — the College of Maine — and the Black Bears males’s staff has by no means made the NCAA Match. The state hardly ever exports expertise to different applications.
“Simply because we don’t produce the large D1 athletes as a lot as these different states do, folks don’t assume basketball is as huge (right here),” stated Ralph Flagg, Cooper’s dad. “However it actually is.”
Maine has no skilled sports activities franchises, so native TV channels stream each spherical of the annual state highschool tournaments, and the regional and championship video games are performed within the state’s largest arenas, in Bangor, Augusta and Portland. Individuals flock from as far north as Madawaska — one among America’s “4 Corners,” which sits on the Canadian border — to look at gamers compete to convey the coveted Gold Ball house to their neighborhood. “On the subject of match time, the final individual leaving the city turns the lights out,” stated Ralph, repeating an outdated Maine expression.
“Highschool basketball is generations deep within the material of all these communities,” Anderson stated. “It binds them collectively.”
Most small Maine cities aren’t giant sufficient to help a faculty themselves. (Newport, for instance, is one among eight communities that feeds into Nokomis Regional Excessive Faculty.) It’s just a few thousand folks right here, one other couple hundred there, all coming collectively to help that technology of gamers. Anderson, who coached Cooper his freshman yr, led Nokomis to its solely ladies state championship in 2001, some extent of delight for each coach and neighborhood.
Cooper’s mother and father each performed at Nokomis. Ralph later performed for Japanese Maine Group Faculty. And mother Kelly stays one of many prime skills Nokomis ever produced; she performed on the one College of Maine staff to win an NCAA Match recreation, a 1999 upset over Stanford.
After faculty, Ralph was enjoying in a males’s league at the local people heart — a transformed Nineteen Forties armory, just some minutes stroll from the home Cooper grew up in — alongside Kelly’s dad (who additionally performed at Nokomis). “That was form of the place we met,” Ralph stated. “On a basketball courtroom.”
They settled, like their mother and father earlier than them, in Newport, elevating their three boys: Hunter, the oldest, and later twins Cooper and Ace. The boys have been raised with a basketball of their palms, touring the state to look at video games. Kelly — who coached the Nokomis varsity ladies staff — has photographs of them asleep in numerous highschool rafters. At house, the boys spent hours within the driveway (when the climate allowed it) enjoying pickup, with their mother and father or pals or only one one other.
“After which even generally within the winter,” Cooper stated, “we’d shovel out a sq. within the snow and play with gloves on.”
By Hunter’s freshman yr, Nokomis was enjoying in a close-by summer time league, however struggled discovering sufficient gamers. So Cooper and Ace joined in — as sixth-graders, towards excessive schoolers. “(Cooper) was nonetheless the perfect participant on both staff,” Ralph stated.
About the identical time, Kelly received a name from a former faculty peer: Andy Bedard, a basketball icon in Maine. Bedard led Mountain Valley Excessive to a state title in 1994, earlier than enjoying at Boston Faculty and Maine. Bedard was teaching his son, Kaden, and had heard about Cooper. He invited the household to attend a observe, they usually have been instantly impressed.
“They have been stunned how I didn’t have an entire lot of time and persistence for, like, kiddie gloves,” Bedard stated. “The drills and the teaching and the urgency and the pace, you’d have thought you have been at a highschool observe, in the event you had your eyes closed and also you didn’t see the children on the market — however in the meantime, they’re like fourth-graders.”
Ultimately, Bedard and Kelly shaped their very own AAU program, the place they may pour each greenback they raised again into their youngsters. They let the boys determine on a reputation: Maine United.
The staff drew gamers from all around the state. Bedard was based mostly in New Gloucester, for example, about 20 minutes north of Portland. So Maine United didn’t have one constant observe health club; it used a church in Portland, or a health club at Division III Bates Faculty in Lewiston, or anyplace it might practice.
As soon as the center faculty bell rang, two or three days per week, the Flaggs trekked down I-95. They’d pack snacks, or order a pizza pickup on the best way, to chop their commute. “In all probability like an hour and 45 minutes,” Bedard stated. “Hour and a half, perhaps, if Kelly was driving 100.” They often drove the household’s blue Chrysler minivan. They’d lay the center row of seats down so the boys might sprawl out, then play outdated Boston Celtics tapes on the van’s mini DVD participant.
“The ‘85-86 Celtics championship Finals disc,” Cooper stated. “We watched all these so many occasions. Then we had Magic versus Fowl. Simply all these different outdated Celtics movies.” These tapes have been Cooper’s basketball schooling. Larry Fowl was his professor and stays his favourite participant. And the best way these groups performed — sharing the ball, prioritizing protection — at all times caught with Cooper. “Watching them each single day perhaps brainwashed him into the truth that, effectively, that’s the way you play,” Bedard stated.
Maine United received shortly regionally, however quickly needed a broader barometer. They discovered one at a seventh-grade grassroots match in Washington, D.C. “I’m seeing all these huge guys within the layup line, and it’s our age group,” Bedard stated, “however definitely all of them regarded a hell of loads older. A few of them had tattoos.” 5 minutes into the sport, Maine United led 24-2. “And Cooper, he’s smashing every thing,” Bedard stated.
Cooper’s efficiency that weekend put him on the nationwide radar. “I keep in mind my grandson texted me, ‘Are you aware Cooper Flagg?’” Anderson stated. “As a result of he had learn someplace that he was, like, the seventh-ranked seventh-grader, eighth-grader within the nation.” By their eighth-grade yr, prep colleges from across the nation began calling, asking them to switch.
However Cooper and Ace refused. They’d grown up with the identical group of pals, at all times cheering on Nokomis, ready for his or her alternative to play for the Warriors. “We at all times talked about when (Hunter and his pals) have been seniors, once we have been freshmen, what the staff was going to appear to be and the way we have been going to win a Gold Ball collectively,” Cooper stated. “As soon as we received there, we have been like, let’s make it occur.”
Cooper averaged 20.5 factors, 10 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals, and three.7 blocks per recreation that season — changing into the primary freshman in state historical past to be named Maine Gatorade Participant of the Yr — and Nokomis received its first state title. A photograph of Hunter, Cooper, and Ace holding the Gold Ball stays the screensaver on Ralph’s telephone. On the trip house to Newport, Ralph and Kelly and different mother and father of children who grew up collectively packed into the Flagg’s Chevy Suburban, singing “We Are the Champions” as loud as they may.
Because the bus carrying the staff pulled off exit 157, followers lined the edges of Moosehead Path in a miles-long parade that stretched to Nokomis. All eight townships that feed into the college despatched their fireplace vehicles and police vehicles to escort the staff bus, and locals close to Nokomis set off fireworks.
“As time has gone on, I’ve grown to understand it an increasing number of,” Cooper stated. “As a result of because the occasions get extra hectic, and every thing’s getting extra loopy, I get to understand the simplicity of that yr. I used to be capable of nonetheless form of simply be a child, and have enjoyable with my pals.”
Tickets to look at Cooper Flagg’s staff play in Portland, Maine, offered out inside 24 hours. (John Jones / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
Halfway by way of Cooper and Ace’s freshman season, the Flaggs accepted the inevitable: The twins must depart house to achieve their full basketball potential.
“It’s a call it’s important to make sooner or later,” Cooper stated, “in the event you actually need to take your self to the following stage.”
Ralph and Kelly vetted colleges nationwide however struggled to seek out the appropriate match. Montverde (Fla.) Academy had recruited the twins as eighth-graders, however the household was reluctant to allow them to transfer to date. Then Montverde invited the Flaggs to look at them in-person at a close-by match. The varsity’s repute — it has produced seven first-round NBA picks since 2020 — preceded it, however the twins lastly noticed Montverde’s fashion, which prioritized the identical team-first rules of the outdated Celtics groups they grew up finding out. Leaving the health club, Cooper and Ace agreed: “That is the place we need to go.”
It wasn’t a straightforward transition. At 15 years outdated, the boys have been away from their help system for the primary time. They couldn’t go fishing on Sebasticook Lake, or tenting and chook looking on outdated paper firm land in northern Maine. They did their laundry for the primary time. It helped some that Bedard moved to Florida — his son additionally transferred to Montverde — and the twins spent most weekends at his home. Ralph and Kelly flew to all of the twins’ house video games, and others on the East Coast, however not being round them day by day took its toll. “It’s exhausting to have conversations with them over the telephone and actually get a real really feel of how they’re feeling,” Ralph stated.
So Ralph and Kelly did what they needed to: They offered their home in Newport and moved to Florida full-time. They closed on their Newport house in November.
“It was a tough resolution as a result of we’re so near the remainder of our neighborhood, however on the similar time, that is the place we wanted to be: with our children,” Ralph stated. “Transferring down right here was in all probability the perfect resolution we’ve made. Simply to be right here with them, and never lose these final couple of years that we do have with them.”
The twins haven’t been again to Newport since final summer time. When Cooper visited a Nokomis basketball camp, the children reacted “prefer it was LeBron James,” stated Grant, the college’s present coach. Cooper nonetheless streams Nokomis’ video games and texts his outdated teammates after huge wins. Newport will at all times be house, even when he now not has a house there.
Which is what makes the primary Friday evening in January so particular. Portland’s Cross Insurance coverage Enviornment is packed.
Or, will probably be.
Temperatures are virtually all the way down to single digits — there’s a “storm” coming this weekend, Mainer converse for a blizzard — however you’d by no means realize it from the road of parents stretching down Free Avenue, ready to get inside. To get a glimpse — presumably, in all probability, their final one — of Cooper Flagg in his house state. Most are carrying gear from one among three groups: Nokomis, Montverde or Duke.
When it was introduced that Cooper and Ace’s Montverde staff can be enjoying right here — as a part of “The Maine Occasion,” a speciality showcase placed on by the identical MADE Hoops group that first hosted Maine United within the seventh grade — tickets offered out inside 24 hours. Ralph and Kelly joke they’re “just like the governors” this weekend. The household’s whole 42-seat midcourt part is full, and there’s at the least that many individuals hovering round it always. To say good day, to reminisce. To be part of this second, one the state has by no means had earlier than.
“We’ve by no means had a real, native Mainer have any such consideration and this potential,” Bedard stated. “And it’s not even like he’s a good participant; we’ve received an opportunity to have the most effective ones ever.”
Cooper doesn’t emerge till halfway by way of the primary recreation, that includes his outdated Nokomis buddies. He’s barely seen in a tunnel underneath the stands, however he can’t keep hidden lengthy. One fortunate child sees him first and asks for an autograph. That turns into 10, 20, virtually 50, inside minutes.
He will get to look at the sport for perhaps three minutes earlier than safety shuffles him again to the locker room.
“At one level, you have been these youngsters,” Cooper stated. “So the place (the eye) could be annoying and the place it may be overwhelming, I take into consideration the truth that I used to dream to be that individual, and I labored in direction of being that individual. So I can’t be, like, aggravated with what comes with it.”
When he dedicated to Duke in October, by way of a commemorative SLAM Journal cowl, T-shirts have been made from the duvet — and proceeds from these gross sales went to the Lewiston-Auburn Space Response fund, which helps that neighborhood following October’s mass taking pictures, when 18 folks have been killed and one other 13 have been injured. These In Flagg We Belief shirts dotting the gang? A portion of these proceeds go to the Ronald McDonald Home of Portland, which took care of Kelly and Ralph when all three boys have been born prematurely. After carrying No. 32 his whole life, Cooper needs to put on No. 2 at Duke in honor of his former Maine United teammate, Donovan Kurt, who died of mind most cancers in November 2022.
“It’s simply necessary, wherever you might be, to at all times keep grounded and be capable to simply give again to what helped you get to the place you might be,” Cooper stated. “To point out help again to all of the folks which are supporting me from the beginning.”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photographs: Brendan Marks / The Athletic; John Jones, Juan Ocampo, Lance King / Getty Pictures)
