{"id":125953,"date":"2025-06-26T10:13:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T10:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/125953\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T10:13:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T10:13:17","slug":"cooper-flagg-a-competitive-apparel-battle-and-the-winning-pitch-like-a-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/125953\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg, a competitive apparel battle and the winning pitch: \u2018Like a movie\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four conference rooms. Three pitch meetings.<\/p>\n

All for one chance to land a future star.<\/p>\n

Rewind to May 20, 2024, the day three factions of rival apparel company executives descended on the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. The purpose of their one-day visit? Woo Cooper Flagg, the then-17-year-old wunderkind widely considered one of basketball\u2019s budding young stars.<\/p>\n

In hindsight \u2014 especially after Wednesday night, when the Dallas Mavericks selected Flagg with the No. 1 pick<\/a> in the 2025 NBA Draft \u2014 it feels foolish for anyone to have ever doubted Flagg\u2019s trajectory. But at the time, the 6-foot-8 forward had yet to play a minute of college basketball at Duke. His unofficial breakout at Team USA\u2019s pre-Olympic training camp \u2014 where he more than held his own against the likes of LeBron James and Steph Curry \u2014 wouldn\u2019t happen for another two months, either.<\/p>\n

Still, Flagg oozed such potential that high-profile apparel brands were lining up to work with him when he was just a high school junior. In the fall of 2023, when the Newport, Maine, native opted to reclassify and enroll at Duke a year early \u2014 effectively skipping his senior season of high school \u2014 NIL (name, image and likeness) offers came fast and furious. Chief among them were major shoe companies like Nike, Adidas and New Balance, all wanting to sign Flagg to their star-studded rosters.<\/p>\n

Flagg, his family and his representation wanted that major decision settled before he arrived on campus in Durham, N.C., so he could focus on hoops. That meant devising a solution: They\u2019d hear pitches from three select companies, all on the same day, and then pick their future partner once the meetings concluded.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike a movie,\u201d said Naveen Lokesh, New Balance\u2019s global marketing director of basketball and football, who also spearheaded the company\u2019s pitch to Flagg. \u201cAlmost like \u2018Air.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On pitch day, the groups of executives huddled in their Four Seasons conference rooms for final rehearsals. Quietly, New Balance was confident in its pitch \u2014 particularly with one secret component, which it hoped would make all the difference.<\/p>\n

Lokesh and his team entered a separate conference room where Flagg, his family and his Creative Artists Agency (CAA) team waited to be wowed. Lokesh wasted no time playing the high notes. He reminded the Flaggs how every summer they used to attend a tent sale every summer at New Balance\u2019s factory in Skowhegan, Maine \u2014 a half-hour drive from Flagg\u2019s hometown \u2014 and pick out sneakers for the upcoming school year. (Kelly, Flagg\u2019s mother, even remembers doing the same when she was a little girl.) Lokesh stressed how important New England was to New Balance, which is based in Boston, as well as the Flagg family. They discussed philanthropy opportunities and product possibilities, and they reiterated that the privately owned brand was not looking to sign Flagg as one of a number of new athletes.<\/p>\n

Rather, New Balance only wanted him. An all-in bet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he goes to another brand,\u201d Lokesh remembered saying, \u201cthey\u2019re going to do great storytelling, and they\u2019re gonna have great products. Great marketing, big campaigns. All the things we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pause. Secret weapon time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s one more thing we want to show you,\u201d Lokesh continued, \u201cthat nobody else can show you or give you. It\u2019s a small message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a video started playing of the Skowhegan factory, countless assembly lines within it and the process of a custom pair of basketball shoes being made. At one point, the father of one of Flagg\u2019s former grassroots teammates \u2014 who still works at the facility \u2014 made an appearance. Then another worker shortly thereafter, proudly proclaiming that, \u201cCooper Flagg being from Maine and being the basketball prodigy that he is, it just gives you that sense of pride.\u201d Eventually, the 53-second clip ended with a still shot of the gray shoes, with \u201cFLAGG\u201d stitched directly onto the tongue.<\/p>\n

As the lights came up inside the Four Seasons conference room, Lokesh pulled out his grand finale: The pair of custom shoes from the video, straight from Maine, still the only pair of Cooper Flagg New Balances in existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty cool to see that video and the Maine shoes and some familiar faces,\u201d Flagg told The Athletic. \u201cThat meeting, going through their plans and kind of the future they saw for me, it just aligned really well with the future that I saw for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In December 2023, two months after Flagg committed to Duke, Lokesh was sitting in New Balance\u2019s Boston headquarters when chief marketing officer Chris Davis swung by his desk and plopped down a magazine. It was a copy of SLAM magazine \u2014 the edition with Flagg on the cover celebrating his commitment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo get him,\u201d Davis told Lokesh. \u201cHe\u2019s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Several apparel companies wanted to sign Cooper Flagg. New Balance won him over. (Courtesy of New Balance)<\/p>\n

Lokesh understood the challenge in doing so. Landing Flagg would represent New Balance\u2019s biggest basketball acquisition since 2018, when it signed likely Hall of Famer Kawhi Leonard away from Jordan Brand. That move reignited a basketball line that had been dormant since the 1980s, back when James Worthy was still New Balance\u2019s signature basketball athlete<\/a>. And while New Balance had complemented Leonard with other top NBA players over the last seven years \u2014 including Jamal Murray, Dejounte Murray and Tyrese Maxey \u2014 it still looked for another top-line star.<\/p>\n

New Balance\u2019s basketball division saw that person in Flagg. He was someone, depending on how his career broke, who could carry the larger mantle alongside brand\u2019s other worldwide faces: tennis star Coco Gauff, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani and Arsenal midfielder Bukayo Saka.<\/p>\n

From December until May, Lokesh and his team researched what it would take to make the landscape-altering signing. They dove into Flagg\u2019s humble origins and came to appreciate someone who preferred a tight-knit circle over mass exposure. Their priority on keeping jobs in New England aligned with Flagg\u2019s overwhelming support for his home region. Perhaps most importantly, New Balance\u2019s private \u201cboutique\u201d approach meant they could sell Flagg on being a centerpiece rather than just another face in the crowd.<\/p>\n

That last piece appealed to Flagg and his family in a major way. In fact, it was one of the deciding reasons they eventually chose New Balance over other apparel companies \u2014 including Nike, which sponsored the EYBL grassroots circuit Flagg played and starred in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just the way that they were willing to believe in Cooper and invest in him early on and say, \u2018He\u2019s our guy,\u2019\u201d Kelly Flagg said. \u201cThey had a very clear strategic plan of how they were going to implement him into their space, and there was a clear path to him potentially getting his own shoes or his own things \u2014 where some of the other companies were playing it maybe a little more safe and saying, \u2018You know what, we\u2019ll see how he does,\u2019 and kind of put it on the shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Four Seasons meeting, New Balance was firmly in the driver\u2019s seat to land Flagg, but it still needed to seal the deal. Lokesh wanted to arrange for the entire family to fly to Boston to meet with Davis, someone they\u2019d be working with directly on many of Flagg\u2019s future endeavors. But it was already June 2024, and the Flaggs had scattered: Cooper was on Duke\u2019s campus; his twin brother, Ace, was back in Maine training with former Boston Celtics center Brian Scalabrine; and his parents were in the process of moving to Greensboro, N.C., where they stayed all of last season to be close to both boys. In the days leading up to the Boston meeting, Lokesh overheard Kelly lamenting how she hadn\u2019t seen Ace in a while because of the chaos.<\/p>\n

So when Davis eventually booked Cooper\u2019s and his parents\u2019 flights to Beantown, he also scheduled a car service to drive Ace down for the day.<\/p>\n

Not for any business reasons. Just to show what New Balance was about.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not signing Ace, but come on. Your mom\u2019s here,\u201d Lokesh said. \u201cThis is how a family brand works.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was only one major hiccup in Flagg signing with New Balance.\u00a0Duke was a Nike school.<\/p>\n

Per the university\u2019s Nike agreement \u2014 which is standard across college athletics \u2014 Flagg would only be allowed to play in Nike apparel during his time in Durham. New Balance could still sign him to a personal, long-term brand deal \u2026 but for a year, as Flagg was exploding on the college basketball scene, the company would have to watch him in a rival\u2019s apparel. It was an unforeseen complication in the NIL era, especially amid one of the most lucrative individual apparel deals a college athlete has signed to date.<\/p>\n

No wonder that back in the Four Seasons conference room, one of Kelly\u2019s first questions was, \u201cHow would we handle this?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in it for the long term,\u201d Lokesh told the Flaggs. \u201cOne year of him wearing a direct competitor\u2019s product will not upset us or ruin something we know is great down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Duke and New Balance were proactive to work around the situation. Between Duke\u2019s two summer school sessions, for example, Flagg flew home to Maine and shot the advertising campaign New Balance used to announce his signing in October 2024. The company also outfitted Flagg \u2014 and his family, which had accrued a healthy amount of rival apparel during Flagg\u2019s grassroots career \u2014 in more New Balance gear than they could fit in their closets. Flagg and Duke coach Jon Scheyer even had a \u201cfriendly conversation,\u201d in Scheyer\u2019s words, during the preseason about how they\u2019d manage the arrangement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, in 2025,\u201d Scheyer said, \u201cthe player has the power to do whatever they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Duke is a Nike school, which meant New Balance had to see Cooper Flagg in rival\u2019s apparel for one season. (Jamie Squire \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

But Flagg never forced the issue, understanding the terms of the dual contracts he was bound by \u2014 although he did still bust Scheyer\u2019s chops a time or two about wanting to wear New Balances in a game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mentioned it a couple of times,\u201d Flagg said, grinning, \u201cbut it was always just jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lokesh and several other New Balance figureheads were in Durham for Flagg\u2019s first regular-season college game, a blowout win over Maine in which he posted 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals. But that was one of only two times Lokesh said he saw Flagg between June 2024 and the end of Flagg\u2019s freshman season, which culminated with Duke losing to Houston in the NCAA Final Four. Instead of suffocating its new signee throughout the season, New Balance sent a basic message to Flagg.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnjoy college. Don\u2019t feel like you\u2019ve got to go do an appearance at the New Balance store because you\u2019re in North Carolina,\u201d Lokesh explained. \u201cWe strategically set out the pitch that said if we do this long-term deal \u2026 then we don\u2019t have to worry about one year at Duke.\u201d<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t prevent New Balance from celebrating Flagg from afar, though. The company posted billboards in various ACC cities celebrating Flagg\u2019s standout campaign, and another round after he was named ACC Player of the Year. Once Duke made it to San Antonio for the Final Four, New Balance made sure to pepper the airport with more promotional materials celebrating the teenager, who by that point had been named the consensus national player of the year.<\/p>\n

And now? With Flagg officially in Dallas as the face of the franchise\u2019s future?\u00a0Now comes the fun stuff.<\/p>\n

That began with a draft party this week at Flagg\u2019s hometown high school in Maine, Nokomis Regional, where he won a state championship his freshman season alongside brothers Ace and Hunter. (New Balance is even making Nokomis new basketball uniforms as part of Flagg\u2019s deal.) The brand also worked with Maine\u2019s state legislature to officially declare June 25, the first day of the NBA Draft, as \u201cFlagg Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s next is what everyone, Flagg included, has been waiting for: shoes. During his lone season at Duke, the Blue Devils would open their facility late at night so Flagg could \u201cstress-test\u201d different pairs of New Balances, in anticipation of a limited-edition Canvas Series colorway set to launch in the lead-up to his Dallas debut. Flagg recently chose the colors and shot a promotional campaign for the shoes back in \u2014 of all places \u2014 Los Angeles, where he spent most of his pre-draft prep time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not gonna do a signature shoe (yet),\u201d Lokesh said, \u201cbut we\u2019ll do a small run of stuff that will be accessible to people all around the world: to have a piece of Cooper at this really pivotal moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll be as welcome for the Flagg family as it is for any of Cooper\u2019s fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody has been crazy bugging us from the state of Maine: When is he going to have something? There\u2019s the Kawhi (shoe); when is the Cooper shoe coming in?\u201d Kelly joked. \u201cI don\u2019t know how many people there are in Maine, but I imagine that they\u2019re gonna sell out pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back when Flagg was a kid, getting a new pair of shoes every summer at the Skowhegan tent sale, he never could have imagined that one day, shoes bearing his favorite colors might be sold at the same place. Now that he\u2019s on the precipice of that reality, it\u2019s only underscored that he and his inner circle made the right choice 13 months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was never really a thought, or anything I thought would be reality,\u201d Flagg said. \u201cBut definitely going through it now, it\u2019s really cool to just be in the position of seeing how it all works and being given these opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Top photo: Mike Lawrence \/ NBAE via Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four conference rooms. Three pitch meetings. All for one chance to land a future star. Rewind to May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,2284,149,691,14305,354,6,231,772,1544,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-125953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-culture","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-duke-blue-devils","13":"tag-memorabilia-collectibles","14":"tag-mens-college-basketball","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-ncaa","17":"tag-ncaa-basketball","18":"tag-ncaab","19":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114749138814611059","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}