PORTLAND (WGME) – Cooper Flagg is a small-town kid from Newport, Maine who has grown into a basketball phenom.

He is widely expected to be the first pick in this year’s NBA Draft.

It seems everyone these days is talking about Cooper Flagg.

After a dominating year at Duke University, he’s in the spotlight, with millions of followers on social media and millions of dollars in the bank from endorsement and NIL deals, before he even sets foot in the NBA.

At the NBA Draft Combine and Lottery in Chicago in May, the 6’9” Maine native made it clear, at just 18 years old, he’s ready to roll.

“It was a crazy draft lottery,” Cooper Flagg said. “A lot of things that people didn’t expect. And I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

“Crazy” is one word to describe everything surrounding Cooper Flagg, especially for people from Maine, which is not exactly known as a basketball hotbed.

But for this young phenom, widely viewed as the best basketball prospect in the world, he isn’t just from Newport, Maine, it’s a huge part of who he is.

Cooper Flagg talks about it all the time, that his Maine roots, his family, his friends, what he calls his “tight circle,” have helped him tune out the noise and stay almost unnaturally calm, focused and grounded.

“Just dealing with it, having a tight circle, like I said earlier, just caring about the opinions of the people who are closest to me and believing in what they say, and their feedback, and the rest of it is what it is, and don’t really listen to it,” Cooper Flagg said.

That’s at the heart of Cooper Flagg’s story, a young basketball savant, who’s laser-focus on his dreams and deeply connected to his family and his community.

Long before the NBA buzz, Cooper Flagg was just a kid from the middle of Maine.

A kid, who was always a little taller and a lot better at basketball than anyone around him.

“Every time I, you know, turn the TV on, I see him on there. I’m like, ‘Oh, wow. You know, I went to high school with him,’” friend Tom Nyce said.

Nyce and Aidan Anderson grew up with Cooper Flagg and actually should be graduating with him at Nokomis High School this year.

Instead, Cooper Flagg and his twin brother, Ace Flagg, would spend only one year at Nokomis before transferring to Florida basketball powerhouse Montverde Academy.

There, he would lead Montverde to a national title, graduate high school a year early as the top recruit in the country, go off to Duke, lead the Blue Devils to the Final Four, then declare for the NBA Draft.

“I think it’s just going to show that no matter where you’re from, even on a bigger level than just Maine, it doesn’t matter where you’re from,” Cooper Flagg said. “What name you come from. That you can just do whatever you put your mind to and you can accomplish anything.”

Every time Cooper Flagg shares his pride for Maine, and as his NBA dreams start to come true, his friends and community share that pride, too.

“It’s definitely surreal,” Anderson said. “Every time you hear his name, he’s just like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’ve known this kid since we were three.’”