There is a version of Cooper Flagg’s life where Friday night looks completely different.
(Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images)
In that version, he grows up in Newport, Maine — population 3,300, no stoplights, an area where the grocery store closes before the NBA tip-off on the East Coast — and the closest he ever gets to TD Garden is a seat in the upper deck. He wears the green. He makes the three-hour drive down I-95 with his family on school breaks and presses his face against the concourse glass to watch the Celtics warm up.
That version of Cooper Flagg exists. He lived it.
Friday night, he walked back into that building wearing No. 32 in Dallas blue, and the place went absolutely nuts for him.
“I tried to take a moment to take a deep breath and take it all in,” Flagg said after the Mavericks’ 120-100 loss to the Celtics. “It’s a dream come true just being out there on that court competing and playing at a high level. It was really special.”
That might be the most understated sentence spoken in Boston in a long time.
Has MAINE ever had a prospect like 6’7 14 year old @Cooper_Flagg
:@bostonandrew pic.twitter.com/TdFxnSW8b0
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) May 5, 2021
Where Basketball Players Come From in Newport, Maine
To understand Flagg, you have to understand where basketball players come from in a place like Newport, Maine. There are no AAU factory programs. There are no recruiting showcases on the corner. What there is, if you are lucky enough to have it, is someone who puts something in front of you and says: watch this.
For Flagg, one of those somethings was a stack of old DVDs of Larry Bird. He absorbed them the way other kids in bigger cities might flip on League Pass — studying footwork, reading angles, learning what a high basketball IQ looked like before he fully understood the term. Bird was from a small town too, after all. That part probably was not lost on him.
The other thing Flagg absorbed was Jayson Tatum. He watched him come through the ranks, watched him at Duke, studied the way he moved and competed, and by his own admission modeled his game after him. In a state where the nearest NBA arena is a three-hour highway stretch away, you do not get to watch your favorite players in person all that often. You find other ways to study them.
Flagg found ways.
A Path That Feels Almost Too Cinematic for Real Life
The thing about Cooper Flagg is that his path has always felt cinematic, almost too tidy for real life. Small town. No local high school program is typically talked about. Transfers to Montverde Academy in Florida. Dominates. Heads to Duke, to the same program and coaching staff that molded the player he spent his childhood studying. Dominates again. And then, on the night of May 12, 2025 — the same night Tatum’s season ended on a stretcher in New York with a torn right Achilles — the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA draft lottery. The player Flagg had invested years modeling his game after went down on the same evening the team that would draft Flagg No. 1 overall secured the right to do so.
Basketball is strange like that.
Very loud reception for Cooper Flagg when announced as a Dallas Mavericks starter at TD Garden. pic.twitter.com/eF0eHbD3Rf
— Grant Afseth (@GrantAfseth) March 7, 2026
The crowd felt it on Friday. Jerseys hung from the upper deck — his Montverde throwback, his royal blue No. 2 from Duke, his Mavericks uniform. Hundreds of fans from Maine had made the pilgrimage south. When Flagg’s name was called during starting lineup introductions, TD Garden resounded with the kind of reception usually reserved for returning playoff heroes.
Jason Kidd, a man who has coached in and around some of the most electric moments this sport has produced, shook his head when asked about it afterward.
“I’ve never heard a road player get a cheer like that, especially here in Boston,” Kidd said. “They tend to go the other way.”
That’s an understatement. Boston fans are not known for warmth toward opponents. Kyrie Irving hears it every time he comes through with the Mavericks. They threw things at opposing players in the old Garden days. And on Friday night, they gave a 19-year-old kid from Maine a standing ovation before the ball had even been tipped.
The Basketball Gods Did Not Cooperate
If the homecoming had a storybook ending, the basketball gods did not cooperate. Flagg went 7-for-23 from the field, the second straight rough offensive night since returning from a left midfoot sprain that had sidelined him for eight games. Early in the first quarter, he slipped awkwardly and was pulled to the bench, and for a few minutes, the whole arena waited tensely. He came back. He kept competing. The Duke product finished with 16 points, eight rebounds, and six assists.
This season, he leads the Mavericks in points, rebounds, and assists, averaging 20.3 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 4.2 assists across 51 games while shooting 47.3 percent from the field. The jump shot is still a work in progress — he is converting just 29.4 percent from three on the year — but everywhere else on the court, he is exactly who he advertised himself to be. Friday, the shot simply did not fall. Flagg went 0-for-4 from deep and finished minus-17. He did not have his best night. He also did not shrink.
“This young man handles the big stage like no one I’ve seen,” Kidd said.
Cooper Flagg Holds Confidence Despite Shooting Woes
Flagg has heard the shooting questions. He knows the numbers. But there is a calm to him when he talks about it that does not feel like deflection — it appears like someone who has really been here before, who has missed shots in big games and figured out how to keep going. Bird missed shots, too. Tatum missed his first six of the night on Friday. You keep playing.
“I feel good about the looks I’m getting,” Flagg said. “I’m getting to my spots and taking the shots I want. They’re just not falling right now. I’m not worried about it.”
But the basketball was almost secondary on this night. The real story lived in the subtext — in the Flagg jerseys scattered throughout a building where opposing players usually get met with silence at best, in his teammate Naji Marshall wearing an “In Flagg We Trust” shirt during warmups, in the group from Newport who drove three hours on a Friday night to watch one of their own.
“Not many players are from where he’s from and get to where he is,” Marshall said. “It’s cool to see all his people supporting him.”
The Thread Between Flagg and Tatum Runs Deeper Than One Game
The Flagg-Tatum thread runs longer than most people realize. When Flagg was in high school, he earned an invite to Tatum’s JT Elite camp — a gathering restricted to the top freshman and sophomore prospects in the country. That was Tatum’s first real look at him. What he noticed was not the scoring, the burst, or the length. It was the competitiveness. The way Flagg looked for the other team’s best player on defense. The way he went after every rebound, like the concept of a loose ball was a personal affront.
That is also not a bad description of how Larry Bird played.
The two developed a relationship that has carried forward through Flagg’s time at Duke and into the league. Mentorship, advice, and the kind of access to a franchise player’s mindset that most rookies cannot get. On Friday, after 298 days away from an NBA court, Tatum came back and played 27 minutes, finishing with 15 points, 12 rebounds, and seven assists. And when the final buzzer rang, he and Flagg found each other at center court and embraced.
Cooper Flagg is excited to face Jayson Tatum next season pic.twitter.com/FZSDQweyBn
— Oh No He Didn’t (@ohnohedidnt24) June 26, 2025
“There are so many levels to it,” Flagg said. “He’s somebody I idolized growing up. Watched him at Duke, and then I followed a similar path playing for Coach Scheyer. Seeing him come into the league and then being able to share the court with him was surreal.”
Tatum told Flagg to keep going.
“He’s been a mentor to me through my journey from Duke to now,” Flagg said. “I told him it’s incredible what he’s been able to do and how quickly he came back.”
Boston Welcomes the Kid From Maine
The Mavericks lost. They have lost six straight, going 2-16 over their last 18 games since trading Anthony Davis in February. The road trip still has Toronto, Atlanta, and Memphis to go. None of that was resolved Friday night.
But something else happened in Boston that had nothing to do with the standings. A kid who grew up watching Bird on DVD and making the drive down to see Tatum play walked back into the building where he first understood what basketball could mean to a life, and the people inside it recognized him. Not as a curiosity. Not as a feel-good sidebar. As a player. As someone they believed in before he had done a single thing in the NBA to earn it from them.
Flagg said he plans to keep coming back to TD Garden throughout his career. He is a Maverick. Dallas is home now. He made that clear.
But this building, this crowd, this three-hour stretch of highway between Newport and Boston — that is part of his story too. It always will be.
The kid from Maine came back. This time, he was on the court.
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