One day some five years ago, Brian Scalabrine received a phone call from trainer Matt MacKenzie informing him of a 13-year old kid from Maine who was flawlessly handling his
business on the basketball court with near perfection against college basketball players.
Scalabrine was skeptical, figuring there was no way someone so young could withstand the physicality of the game at that age against older kids. But the kid showed up – and showed out – at Scalabrine’s camp, and Scalabrine was completely blown away.
That kid was none other than Cooper Flagg.
It was Flagg’s extraordinary basketball IQ, command of the court, ability to get to his spots and penchant for finding the open teammate as a 6-6 phenom that ultimately caught Scalabrine’s undivided attention.
“And it wasn’t because he dunked or anything like that,” Scalabrine told Mavs.com. “It was a cross-court pass teamed up to a guy with perfect timing in the corner in a game where there was Division-1 players there — 18-19-year old players there — and he passed every test.”
Every test?
“It’s not just the eye test,” Scalabrine said. “Mentally, he’s on a whole other level. His greatest strength as a basketball player is his ability to learn. This year he’ll play and he might make a mistake, but a month later that mistake will be a thing of the past. Ask anybody.
“You can ask his high school coach. You can ask Jon Scheyer. And you’ll find out that whatever mistake he made, he learned from it.”
Actually, Scalabrine learned that Flagg wanted to play college basketball at Duke. So, he sent a text to Scheyer, and Flagg wound up playing for Duke last season where he averaged 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds and was named the consensus National College Player of the Year before becoming the No. 1 overall pick by the Dallas Mavericks in this summer’s NBA Draft.
Scalabrine also contacted the folks at USA Basketball and told them about Flagg, who, in 2022 was named the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year.
Scalabrine played in the NBA from 2001-2012, and was a reserve forward on the Boston Celtics’ 2008 NBA championship team. So, since he was teammates with Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo, he knows a thing or two about players with exceptional talents.
Scalabrine even invited Flagg to play on his AAU team in Boston. It was there where Flagg impressively won eight straight games in a 10-second format of games set up by Scalabrine.
“I’d have people coming in playing, and we’ll do control pickup,” Scalabrine said. “We put on a 10-second shot clock where you can only dribble the ball twice, and you can only have the ball in your hands for a second.
“We do all kinds of things. We’re playing pickup, but we put restrictions, because sometimes these kids, they dribble around too much.”
None of the restrictions were too much for Flagg to absorb. It got to the point where Scalabrine figured he had taught Flagg all that he knew. But, deep down, he knew Flagg had many other levels in his repertoire.
Scalabrine said: “There was one point about a year later that I worked him out and I just pulled him to the side and I said, ‘Listen, man, I can’t help you anymore. You need to go and work out with LeBron 
(James) and Kevin Durant. Go search out the best players in the world. Go train with those guys.’
“And he’s been doing that in the summertime ever since.”
By Scalabrine’s estimation, Flagg compares favorably to James, who is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
“If LeBron was in an F1 race car, (Flagg) trends like that,” he said. “He has the ball in his hands a lot, he can check off and make reads.
“LeBron is a freak of nature. Cooper is not a freak of nature. He’s a good athlete, but I just think he trends to that line where he has the ball in his hands, he can sort of run the show and he’ll learn from there.”
And it didn’t take long for Flagg, according to Scalabrine, to pick up little nuances of the game. Tidbits that, for the Mavs, could mean the difference between winning and losing.
“One time I wanted him to work on throwing the alley-oop, but up in Maine we didn’t have anybody,” Scalabrine said. “So, we went down in New Hampshire and there was a professional there that came and played with us – a 6-10 guy. So, within three or four possessions of us playing pick-and-roll, Cooper had already mastered reading my hands.
“If my hands were low, he throws it up. If my hands were high, he throws a bounce pass. Those are hard picks to pick up. Some people work their whole life and do not figure that stuff out. It’s the idea of him having the ball in his hands and him making the right basketball play.”
Scalabrine said being drafted by the Mavs – a team stacks with veterans such as Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, P. J. Washington and Daniel Gafford – is a godsend for Flagg.
“I actually think it’s better for him to be around good players,” Scalabrine said. “They can all be good and young, but they happen to be good and older. I think that will be really helpful.
“When you’re a guard in the NBA and you’re seeing 25 different coverages, I think it’s really nice to have a guy you can throw the ball down to in Anthony Davis.”
Flagg’s transition from college to the NBA won’t be just about his ability to score and pass the basketball, Scalabrine said. There are so many other factors in play.
“You’re getting a big-time offensive player that can move the ball and run a team, and you’re also getting a guy that can guard,” Scalabrine said. “And you’ve got to be excited about that.
“If you just look at the Mavs and you just think about it from a defensive standpoint, they can the best defensive team in the Western Conference. And that’s not easy to do, because the West is tough. The personnel on their team, if you ask coaches – don’t ask analysts or fans. If you ask coaches, coaches look at that defensive lineup and they think it’s going to be really tough to deal with.”
And that’s mainly due to the addition of Flagg, who is 6-9 and only 18 years old — and still growing. Scalabrine, meanwhile, harkens back to when he first saw Flagg on the basketball court and how Flagg was effectively processing things as a very young teenager.
“He was incredible,” Scalabrine said. “It’s not like I’m sticking my neck out on the line to tell everybody how good this kid is. It was a no-brainer.”
X: @DwainPrice