Cooper Flagg’s Duke debut is just the start of a season full of highly anticipated moves

DURHAM, NC – Twenty minutes was just a taste.

Or rather: a plague.

Only so much can be gleaned from these preseason, meet-the-team, intrasquad events, like Duke’s Countdown to Craziness on Friday night. They’re as much about the schtick – mood lighting, air cannons, crazy introductory dances – as they are about any actual basketball. And of course they don’t count.

But her Doing have meaning.

Especially in the case of this projected preseason top-five team — featuring the nation’s top freshman in Cooper Flagg and a bevy of other NBA hopefuls — this is a glimpse. A snapshot of what is possible. So when you see junior guard Tyrese Proctor on the fast break, with Flagg – the projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft – sprinting ahead of him, and then you see Proctor kick an outlet pass forward and you see Flagg loading up as he goes to the edge leaves…

Well, you start to imagine the possibilities. About the high-flying acrobatics that will unfold, yes, but also beyond. Your thoughts jump ahead to the kind of spectacular plays and games this team has in store, if it can live up to even a fraction of the still-growing hype surrounding it.

At least the moment paid off: Flagg lifted off effortlessly from the Cameron Indoor track, flipped backwards in the air and spooled home a highlight reel with a ho-hum attitude.

His face seemed to say: there is more to come.

“You can’t really describe it, the feeling when you’re playing,” Flagg said. “You can’t really experience that kind of thing until it happens.”

Flagg finished the night with 13 points – third most overall as players changed teams at halftime – as well as three rebounds, three assists and two turnovers. He was… good, if not overly respectful.

“I thought Cooper was a little hesitant tonight and just getting a feel for things,” coach Jon Scheyer said. “That’s the great thing about Coop: he’s such a team player and he has such a good feel for the game.”

That much was clear, even on his first basket. The 6-foot-4 Maine native drove from beyond the arc to his left and then switched the ball in the air to his right hand, displaying the inside touch and finishing he is known for. From the front row of Duke’s student section, through the raucous applause, you could hear one Cameron Crazie note the occasion:

Those were Cooper Flagg’s first points at Duke.

The novelty surrounding Flagg, especially early on — and especially if he’s as good as expected, somewhere near the Zion Williamson stratosphere that no one in college has occupied since — will be something. His first dunk. First choose six. First 20-point game, first double-double. Everything. Diligent attention will be paid to the continued rise of someone who was considered “generative” by the masses even before his 18th birthday. (That’s December 21, by the way; Georgia Tech drew the short stick and hosts the Blue Devils that evening.)

Of course, Flagg can’t look at this season that way. That includes his teammates, many of whom — like fellow freshmen Khaman Maluach and Kon Knueppel — will likely follow him to the NBA as early as June of next year. If Duke learned anything from Williamson’s star-studded 2018-19 season, it was how to handle the spectacle that follows a phenomenon.

“You just have to stay present,” Proctor said. “Everyone knows who Coop is. Everyone knows who Khaman is. Everyone knows who all these guys are. So I think everyone was on the same page from day one. We didn’t necessarily have to sit down and talk about, “It’s going to be us over me.” Everyone pretty much knows that.”

But saying that in front of your home fans, on a night that is more ceremonial than serious, is one thing – and keeping it up after a tough early-season spell is another. In the first month of the season, Duke plays (deep breath) against Kentucky in the Champions Classic in Atlanta, in Arizona, against Kansas in Las Vegas, all before hosting Auburn in the ACC-SEC Challenge in early December. That’s three The Athletics‘s top 10 teams of the preseason, one after another. By Flagg’s birthday, we’ll have a good idea of ​​what kind of talent he is, what kind of team Duke is – and how fair the national title expectations for this squad really are.

Friday was a preview of that, a 20-minute segment before Duke plays more than 30 games over the next five – maybe six – months.

It’s nothing worth overreacting to.

But it is, if nothing else, worth mentioning. Because Friday was the start of Flagg and Duke.

“I enjoyed seeing him in a Duke uniform tonight,” Scheyer said. “I know so much.”

(Photo: Grant Halverson/Getty Images)