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Cooper Flagg’s Mental Game Reminds Brian Scalabrine of Two Modern NBA Legends
Cooper Flagg is all but certain to hear his name called with the first pick in the 2025 NBA Draft to the Dallas Mavericks this time next week. And the story of how he became the elite prospect he is cannot be told without Brian Scalabrine.
Scalabrine, a former NBA player turned Boston Celtics broadcaster, also serves as a trainer to teenage basketball players in the Boston area. He was introduced to Flagg when the future Duke star was in eighth grade and helped usher along his development.
Speaking to Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix with the draft around the corner, Scalabrine gushed about Flagg's basketball IQ in particular and invoked the names of two modern NBA legends as comparisons.
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“He’s a supercomputer,” Scalabrine told Mannix. “Whatever you tell him, he’ll master in 24 hours. Just picture that for one second. Think about the trajectory of a player that you could tell something one day and he figures it out the next. Chris Paul, LeBron James, those are the guys with minds like that. He’s as smart as any player I’ve ever been around. His basketball IQ is off the charts.”
A lofty pair of names to throw around. But it is reflective of how highly Flagg's potential is regarded. He has all the physical tools a top prospect should have, yet his on-court awareness at Duke was so obviously elite evaluators are just as willing to discuss that as his scoring prowess or defensive acumen. There's plenty of that to go around, too; Flagg averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 1.4 blocks per game as a freshman for the Blue Devils last season.
Flagg clearly has a lot of hype to live up to. But first comes the draft and all the buzz around it.
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Liam McKeone is a senior writer for the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in the industry as a content creator since 2017, and prior to joining SI in May 2024, McKeone worked for NBC Sports Boston and The Big Lead. In addition to his work as a writer, he has hosted the Press Pass Podcast covering sports media and The Big Stream covering pop culture. A graduate of Fordham University, he is always up for a good debate and enjoys loudly arguing about sports, rap music, books and video games. McKeone has been a member of the National Sports Media Association since 2020.