In January, I got a call from my college friend Greg: “Hey Karl, want to see Cooper Flagg in person?” he asked.

“Heck, yes,”  I said.

He could make that happen. He has a close friend at Duke who has season tickets to all the home hoop contests. I asked brazenly, “Can my son Peter come too?” and he charitably said, “Sure.”

So Peter and I had a basketball adventure.

Peter is a true basketball maven and savant. He played for MUHS and then just about every day in college at Middlebury, noon hoops and intramurals, and wrote about basketball for the Campus newspaper and an online publication “Nothing But NESCAC.” He lives in Burlington now, works at Winooski Elementary School, and plays pick-up at UVM three or four nights a week.

Peter was a godsend as it turned out. Not only was he good company but he knew how to get us home when all our flights were canceled on the Sunday after the game when Vermont and the East got dumped on with a foot or more of snow.

He just took a few minutes, tapped some of those numbers and letters on his phone and, voila, we were headed home to Burlington on Monday, though through Chicago, not Washington. Genius stuff.

Duke is ranked the #2 college basketball team in the country with a 26-3 record, heading into the NCAA Tournament (“March Madness”). Cooper Flagg is their best player, leads the team in points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. It is likely he will be named College Basketball Player of the Year and be the first player selected in the NBA draft in June.

The Cooper Flagg story is well known by now, much written about. He’s from the small town of Newport, Maine (population about 3,500), located between Etna and Palmyra. He should be a senior in high school, like his twin brother Ace, who attends a prep powerhouse just down the road from Duke and will attend UMaine next year. Cooper turned 18 in December but skipped his senior year (he “reclassified”).

Oh yes, the game itself, Duke vs. Stanford. It wasn’t a competitive match (106-70) — Duke is much better than Stanford, but that didn’t really matter: we were there for the experience. To actually see a game in Duke’s hallowed hall of hoop, Cameron Indoor Stadium, after watching so many games on TV was compelling indeed.

CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM at Duke University is considered (especially by Dukies) a hoop Mecca. Like Fenway Park in baseball, it is a sports shrine and is smaller than most big-time college basketball venues.
Photo by Karl Lindholm

There are no tickets to games for Duke students. They are admitted an hour and a half before tip-off, first come-first served. They wait in line for hours in Krzyzewskiville, named after Mike Krzyzewski (sh-SHEF-ski), Duke’s legendary coach who retired three years ago. They stay overnight in tents for big games.

From watching Duke games on TV, Peter and I didn’t realize that Cameron is small, just 9,314 seats, compared to other big time college arenas (the Dean Smith Center at the University of North Carolina, for example, just a half hour away, seats nearly 22,000). The Duke students, the “Cameron Crazies,” sit, or rather stand, bedecked in colorful garb, in a special courtside section and maintain a raucous din for the whole game.

All the interior spaces of Cameron, the concourses, have a museum feel, adorned as they are with photographs and displays that exhibit Duke’s extraordinary history of basketball success. Cameron was built in 1940 and all suggestions to expand or replace it have been resisted. The intimacy of the setting is vital to the excitement of the spectator experience.

Now, about Cooper Flagg: he is remarkably talented for a player at any age. It really was a joy to see him in person and we had great seats (thank you, Greg and Doren).

The “experts” say he must improve his “handle” (ball handling: dribbling, passing). I didn’t see that. His game is so complete. He shoots righthanded but seems equally adept with his right or left hand going to the basket. My favorite sequence was when he drove to the basket with his left hand and laid a soft 8- to 10-footer off the glass and in — then made the same move from the right side a couple of possessions later.

I think his job in the first half of games is to stay out of foul trouble and be available for crunch-time in the second half. He played on the baseline or the wing in the first half, a forward. In the second half he played in the back court, a 6’9” off guard, and was involved in nearly every play, often bringing the ball up himself. He ended up with 19 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, and two steals.

BEFORE THE DUKE-STANFORD basketball game on Feb. 15, the columnist and his wingman did not have to wait in line at Krzyzewskiville.
Photo courtesy of Karl Lindholm

He is an expressive player and seems to love playing for this team, which has three other first-years who might opt for the draft this June. Cooper has indicated that he has enjoyed his year at Duke which has raised hopes there that it might not be “One and Done,” and he would return to school for another year. At their final home game, the Crazies chanted hopefully “one more year!”

It’s an intriguing thought. In the chaotic state of big-time college sports, he makes a lot of money as a Duke student, NIL money, direct payments to athletes. He likes his classes. He already has a shoe contract with Boston-based New Balance (which has a factory in Skowhegan, Maine, only about a half hour from Newport). Stay or go, he’s in line to make a lot of money.

I think it would be great if he stayed at Duke and could be a college kid playing with his friends and contemporaries before entering the NBA and playing the rigors of an 82-game regular season schedule against men a decade older, some even twice his age, or more (Lebron).

At the end of the Duke-Stanford game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, Peter and I turned to one another and exchanged a familiar gesture that we do when we have witnessed something extraordinary in an athletic event, a beautiful game, say, or a striking sequence.

It’s a light fist bump — we say in gratitude and appreciation:

“Sports!”

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Karl Lindholm can be reached at [email protected].