Cooper Flagg has had to work hard to get where he is today. Aside from the hours and hours in the driveway with his brothers and friends, he had to go on long drives with his family to get father south in New England where he could face better competition. On the way, he researched the 1986 Celtics on a DVD player.
When he was a bit older, he moved 1,462 miles south from Newport, Maine, to Montervede Academy in Florida to get a higher level of competition.
And now, as his NBA rookie debut approaches, Flagg is again turning to video to research, but in a very different way: he’s using NBA 2K26 to research how he might fit in with Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving. It’s a pretty interesting way to see how you might fit with Irving, since he’s going to be out for several more months after his knee injury late last season.