It’s been a busy week for Cooper Flagg. On Monday, he put the entire basketball world on alert during a Team USA scrimmage in Las Vegas. On Thursday night, the Duke freshman was in Los Angeles walking the red carpet at the ESPYS and taking home the Gatorade Male Player of the Year Award, one of the most prestigious honors given to high school athletes. The 12 finalists for the Gatorade National Player of the Year Award lined up on stage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood as Flagg accepted the award alongside track star Sadie Engelhardt, who won Female Player of the Year honors.
“It’s a great accomplishment and a great honor to be here and a great opportunity to interact with elite players from different sports,” Flagg told Yahoo Sports. “It means a lot. It’s a really big deal to me, knowing how much effort I’ve put in.”
Previous winners of the Player of the Year award include LeBron James, Jayson Tatum, Candace Parker, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Paige Bueckers and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Flagg also won the national men’s basketball player of the year award in March, joining a select group of past winners including Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, James, Tatum and Kevin Love, among others.
Love, who has been involved with Gatorade since winning the award in 2007, had the opportunity to mentor Flagg this week and was impressed with his game and potential at the NBA level.
“I see Cooper as having a number of skills in his game,” Love told Yahoo Sports. “He’s a great fit. You can tell he knows the game well. You just have to watch a little bit of film on him to see that he does a little bit of everything well. He takes advantage of smaller players, he follows rebounds, he takes advantage of a player moving away from him and shoots three-pointers, regardless of his size. He uses his height and length to get from one to five, and the combination of size, length and athleticism is impressive.”
Flagg was the No. 1-ranked player coming out of high school and chose Duke over UConn and Kansas. Last season in high school, Flagg led Montverde Academy (Fla.) to a 33-0 record and the high school national title. He also competed in the McDonald’s All American Game and the Nike Hoop Summit and is the early favorite to go No. 1 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft.