17-YEAR-OLD COOPER FLAGG is considered by consensus the nation’s best high school basketball player in 2024. He will play at Duke University next year and likely be the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft next spring. He comes from Newport, a small town in Maine.

If you are a basketball fan, you probably know the name “Cooper Flagg.”

This past basketball season, he was the best high school player in the country. Many believe he’s the best of the high school players in the country since Lebron James, who graduated from high school in 2003.

Flagg is 6’9” and 17 years old (won’t be 18 until December).

Recently, he was a member of the USA Select Team, comprised of young NBA players, who practiced with and scrimmaged against Team USA, now competing in the Olympics in Paris. One NBA executive said, “He could play for us right now.” NBA Superstar Kevin Durant called him “a hell of a player.”

Flagg will play at hoop superpower Duke University this next season and will undoubtedly be there for just one year. He is the putative first pick in the 2025 draft. Duke Coach Jon Scheyer says of his game: “He always competes with 100% effort. Obviously, his athleticism, talent, size, and skill is off the charts. But to me, it’s how he competes. And who he is as a teammate.”

NBA teams are already jockeying for a favorable position in the 2025 draft lottery — that is, they’re planning to be bad next year — the teams at the bottom of the league pick first in the draft.

So why am I writing about this teenaged phenom? Simple: he’s from Maine! I’m from Maine originally and Maine is a lot like Vermont, I think, only bigger.

Cooper Flagg is a small-town boy from Newport, Maine, (population 3,275) about an hour west of the big city of Bangor (31,000). Newport may be a small town, but it’s a basketball-mad town in a basketball-mad state.

He comes from a basketball family. His dad, Ralph, is 6’9” and played college ball at Eastern Maine Community College. His mom, Kelly Bowman Flagg, is 5’10” and was an outstanding player at the University of Maine from ’95 to ’99, captain her senior year. The Black Bears won the America East title and appeared in the NCAA tournament all four of her years there.

Cooper’s twin brother, Ace, 6’8”, is a year behind him in school (Cooper “reclassified” himself in order to qualify for the 2025 NBA draft) and is himself attracting the attention of solid Division I programs. Ace is no Cooper, but then, no one is.

As freshmen at Nokomis High in Newport, Cooper and Ace led their team to the Class A (big schools) Championship in 2022. The last two years, both boys have attended school in Florida at the powerhouse prep Monteverde Academy, winners of the national high school championship this past spring. Cooper was the Gatorade High School Player of the Year

Ralph and Kelly moved to Florida with their boys to provide the stability of a family environment while they competed at the highest possible high school level.  Next year, they will be Greensboro, N.C., about an hour from Duke, as Ace will play for Greensboro Day School, winners of 12 state basketball championships since 1989.

I asked Bruce Bosley, whose knowledge of Vermont sports is unmatched, truly encyclopedic, to fill me in on who the closest Vermont players are to Cooper Flagg, keeping in mind the difficulty of the comparison — “maybe just tell me the best of the native Vermonters.”

“There is only one reasonable comparison to Cooper Flagg,“ Bruce explained, “and that’s John Leclair, who led BFA St. Albans to state championships, was brilliant at UVM for four years, and was an all-star in the NHL. He’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame.”

“Bose,” I admonished, “I’m writing a basketball article! No hockey players . . . or skiers!” I then asked, “Was Taylor Coppenrath, in a sense, our Cooper Flagg?”

He explained that, while Coppenrath was from a small town, West Barnet (pop. 1,663), he lacked the precocity of Flagg:  “He was a classic late developer,” who didn’t play on the varsity basketball team at St. Johnsbury Academy until his junior year.

FORMER UVM COACH Tom Brennan called Taylor Coppenrath (pictured here) “the best male basketball player ever to play in this state.” Coppenrath starred for the UVM basketball team from 2001-2005 and played professionally for 10 years in top leagues in Europe.

At 6’9”, Taylor was a terrific player for the University of Vermont from 2001-2005, winning the Player-of the Year award in the America East Conference three times and leading the UVM program in 2005 to the most successful season (25-7) in UVM’s history, to that point, and the defeat of mighty Syracuse (60-57) in the NCAA tournament.

His UVM coach Tom Brennan called him “the very best male basketball player ever to play in this state.”

Taylor enjoyed a 10-year professional career in Europe (Greece and Spain) and has now returned to his roots, raising his family in Vermont and teaching at Georgia (Vt.) Middle and Elementary School.

In our recent conversation, Bruce Bosley regaled me with tales of other great Vermonters. He ranks Coppenrath as a “close first” over Keith Cieplicki of Rice and Jim McCaffrey of Rutland.

Cieplicki played brilliantly at William and Mary (1981-85) where his number has been retired and he is a member of their Athletic Hall of Fame. McCaffrey attended St. Michael’s for two years and then transferred to Holy Cross — and scored 1,000 points in both places (1982-86).

Bruce admonished me to include in a discussion of great native Vermont basketball players female stars Nicole Levesque Andres of Shaftsbury (pop. 3,450) and Mount Anthony Union (1990) — and Jade Huntington of Bradford (pop. 2,620) and Oxbow High School (1988). Both had spectacular careers in big-time college basketball at Vanderbilt and Wake Forest universities, respectively.

Great basketball players can come from anywhere: NBA legend Jerry West, was “Zeke from Cabin Creek, W.V.” (population, 775);  Hall of Famer Karl Malone, the “Mailman,” grew up in Summerfield, La. (pop. 229).

It may be that the next Cooper Flagg, who can likewise excite the entire basketball world, will come from a small town in Vermont.

Unlikely maybe, but possible. We’ll see.

Karl Lindholm can be contacted at [email protected].