The Athletic: Brian Scalabrine not surprised by Cooper Flagg's ascent: 'He's the same kid'

“He walked in and dominated,” Scalabrine told The Athletic. “That’s when I made the phone call to USA Basketball. Made the phone call to (Duke coach) Jon Scheyer. I had kind of heard of him but didn’t know enough. From there, he just took off.”

Flagg, who turned 19 in December, is now as old as some of the competition he faced in Scalabrine’s pickup run. More than halfway through his rookie season in the NBA, he has continued dominating much older competition.

On Tuesday, Flagg scored 36 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished out six assists in the Dallas Mavericks’ 110-100 loss to the Celtics at American Airlines Center. It was his third consecutive game with at least 30 points.

“He’s the same kid. He’s just doing it at a higher level,” said Scalabrine, who played 11 seasons in the NBA with the New Jersey Nets (2001-05), Celtics (2005-10) and Chicago Bulls (2010-12). “He doesn’t play that much differently. He’s obviously developed parts of his game. His ability to play through contact is the same as when he was 14.”

Over his last three games, Flagg has scored 119 points, the most by a teenager over a three-game span in NBA history. He is averaging 20.1 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists this season. On Tuesday afternoon, Flagg was named the Western Conference Rookie of the Month for the third straight month.

Flagg impacts so many different facets of the game at such a young age, and Scalabrine compares him to LeBron James — who was the No. 1 draft pick 22 years before the Mavericks selected Flagg at that slot.

“To me, that’s his comparable,” Scalabrine said. “The ability to highly process the game, make the right reads. The game looks easy for him because of his mind. He’s a great athlete. Gets to where he wants to go, gets to his spots. It’s not, like, shocking, for me to see what he’s doing.”

Tuesday’s game held special significance for Flagg because he was a childhood fan of the Celtics. He practically had no choice in that decision. His mother, Kelly, a former Division I player at the University of Maine, was a massive Celtics fan who used to show her three sons videos of the 1980s-era Boston teams, which starred Larry Bird.

Flagg said at shootaround Tuesday morning that he has tried to channel Bird’s “competitive spirit.”

“Doing everything out there,” Flagg said. “Even sometimes the stuff that people don’t want to do. The little stuff.”

Cooper Flagg, defended by the Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown, had 36 points, nine rebounds and six assists for the Mavericks on Tuesday.

Flagg’s intensity is one of his defining traits. The Mavericks appear to be headed toward the lottery and have been without both of their highest-paid players, Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis, for the majority of this season. None of that has affected Flagg’s motor, which is nonstop.

It’s obvious that Flagg is going to produce a boatload of chase-down blocks. In the third quarter of Tuesday’s game, Flagg ran back on defense after teammate Dwight Powell’s turnover and swatted Celtics guard Baylor Scheierman’s transition attempt off the backboard.

“He has a savage side to him, which is good,” Scalabrine said. “He can talk trash to people but keep his composure.”

In the five years since Scalabrine first watched Flagg play, Flagg became the top-ranked prospect in the country, skipped a year of high school so he could enroll in college early, won the Naismith College Player of the Year at Duke and was selected with the first pick in the NBA Draft.

His ascent hasn’t surprised Scalabrine one bit.

“Never overwhelmed by any of this,” Scalabrine said. “He has a great team around him of people who have brought him to this level. And obviously, he’s a generational talent. It’s a good combination, a really good combination.”

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