DURHAM, N.C. — Twenty mins have been only a style.
Or truly, a tease.
Best such a lot can also be gleaned from those preseason, meet-the-team, intrasquad occasions, like Duke’s Countdown to Craziness on Friday evening. They’re as a lot concerning the schtick — temper lighting fixtures, wind cannons, foolish introductory dances — as any unedited basketball. And, clearly, they don’t rely.
However they do have which means.
Particularly on the subject of this projected top-five preseason crew — with the rustic’s peak freshman in Cooper Flagg and a bevy of alternative NBA hopefuls — it is a glimpse. A snapshot of what’s imaginable. So while you see youthful barricade Tyrese Proctor at the speedy fracture, with Flagg — the predicted Disagree. 1 select within the 2025 NBA Draft — sprinting forward of him, and later you spot Proctor kick forward an outlet move, and you spot Flagg loading up as he takes to the air towards the rim …
Smartly, you get started imagining the chances. In regards to the high-flying acrobatics about to spread, sure, but additionally past. Your thoughts skips ahead, to the forms of impressive performs and video games this crew will have in bind if it could ship on even a fragment of the still-growing hype state it.
The time, a minimum of, delivered: Flagg easily increased off the Cameron Indoor court docket, bent backward in midair and flushed house a spotlight dunk with a ho-hum perspective.
His face appeared to say, extra to return.
“You can’t really describe it, the feeling when you’re out there playing,” Flagg stated. “That type of stuff is something you can’t really experience until it happens.”
Flagg completed the evening with 13 issues — third-most total, making an allowance for avid gamers have been switching groups at halftime — in addition to 3 rebounds, 3 assists, and two yields. He was once … excellent, if no longer overly deferential.
“I thought Cooper tonight was being a little hesitant, and just getting a feel for things,” professor Jon Scheyer stated. “That’s the beauty of Coop: He’s such a team player, and he has such a great feel for the game.”
That a lot was once discoverable, even on his first basket. The 6-foot-9 Maine local drove left from outdoor the arc, later switched the ball to his proper hand in midair, showcasing the contact and within completing he’s so recognized for. From the primary row of Duke’s pupil category, during the loud applause, you should listen one Cameron Crazie be aware the age:
The ones have been Cooper Flagg’s first issues at Duke.
The newness round Flagg, particularly early on — and particularly if he’s as excellent as anticipated, any place similar the Zion Williamson stratosphere that no person in faculty hoops has engaged since — will probably be a factor. His first dunk. First select six. First 20-point recreation, first double-double. It all. It’ll be famous, diligently, the ongoing ascent of anyone already deemed “generational” by means of the loads prior to his 18th birthday. (That’s Dec. 21, by means of the way in which; Georgia Tech drew the cut stick and hosts the Blue Devils that evening.)
Flagg, after all, can’t take a look at this season that manner. Neither can his teammates, a lot of whom — like fellow newbies Khaman Maluach and Kon Knueppel — might be following him to the NBA as early as nearest June. If Duke discovered anything else from its star-studded 2018-19 season with Williamson, it’s how one can deal with the spectacle that follows a phenomenon.
“You’ve just gotta stay present,” Proctor stated. “Everyone knows who Coop is. Everyone knows who Khaman is. Everyone knows who all these guys are. So I think from day one, everyone has been on the same page. We haven’t necessarily had to sit down and talk about, ‘It’s going to be we over me.’ Everyone sort of knows that.”
However announcing so in entrance of your own home lovers, on an evening that’s extra ceremonial than critical, is something — and keeping up that next a difficult early-season stretch is any other solely. Within the first pace of the season, Duke performs (deep breath) Kentucky within the Champions Vintage in Atlanta, at Arizona, as opposed to Kansas in Las Vegas, all prior to internet hosting Auburn within the ACC-SEC Problem in early December. That’s 3 of The Athletic’s peak 10 preseason groups, one next any other next any other. We’ll have a excellent sense by means of Flagg’s birthday of the type of ability he’s, what sort of crew Duke is — and the way truthful the nationwide identify expectancies for this squad truly are.
Friday was once a style of all that, a 20-minute morsel prior to the 30-plus video games Duke has coming over the nearest 5 — perhaps six — months.
It’s not anything usefulness overreacting to.
However it’s, if not anything else, usefulness noting. As a result of Friday was once Flagg’s, and Duke’s, starting.
“I liked seeing him in a Duke uniform tonight,” Scheyer stated. “I know that much.”
(Photograph: Provide Halverson / Getty Pictures)
