NEWPORT, Maine — The Duke flag is pinned to the siding above the front door of Bill Nemer’s home alongside Sebasticook Lake, just down the road from where Cooper Flagg is having a house built for his grandparents. Nemer was never much of a Blue Devils fan, but he bought the flag the day Maine’s favorite son committed to Duke. Now, he never misses a game.

His Facebook page is a shrine to Flagg, an endless scroll of highlights, stats and overt gushing that might seem like hyperbole if it was directed at anyone other than college basketball’s biggest star.

He pulls up videos on his cell phone from the first time he saw Flagg in person, scrolls through to find the best clips, and he watches, still in awe of the gangly 14-year-old dunking over boys three or four years older. Nemer spent 40 years coaching high school sports in Maine, and when he moved to Newport just in time for Flagg’s freshman season at Nokomis Regional High — well, that was a gift from the universe, and he wanted to capture every miraculous second of it.

Nemer’s wife says he’s obsessed, an accusation he has quit trying to refute.

“So, maybe I am a little obsessed,” he said. “But this is the biggest sports story in Maine ever, and probably the biggest there ever will be.”

The world has gotten to see Flagg’s talent this season at Duke, but here in Maine, there are those who witnessed Flagg’s brilliance in its infancy, who can swear to the details of stories that now border on mythology, of the lanky kid from a blink-and-you-miss-it town who did the impossible and made it look easy.

So, sure, Nemer is a bit obsessive about Flagg. Like the others around Maine who gather in front of TVs at the local bowling alley to watch Duke or swap stories of Flagg’s brilliance the next morning over flap jacks at the truck stop diner that serves as the closest thing Newport has to a tourist attraction, Nemer sees it as his job to share the Gospel of Cooper. After all, Flagg’s ascendance requires testimony, because it might otherwise seem too impossible to believe.

Flagg will soon be the first player selected in the NBA draft — an eventuality that seemed obvious even before he had played a collegiate game. He has led Duke to a No. 1 ranking, an ACC regular-season title, and he has his sights set on a national championship. He has made highlight-reel dunks, dominated games, bent the opposition to his will with a seemingly effortless brilliance in every facet of the game. And now, as Flagg prepares to take the court in the ACC tournament this week, the rest of the college basketball world understands something Nemer and his neighbors learned years ago. There’s simply no one else like him.

“I watched him go through warmups the first time,” Nemer said, “and I knew.”

IN ANOTHER WORLD, one where Flagg hadn’t skipped his final year of high school and enrolled at Duke early, Kaden Bedard would be playing point guard for his best friend at Montverde Academy in Florida — where Flagg transferred following his freshman season — still running that backdoor play where Bedard would dribble at Flagg, watch the defense bite, dish the ball and grin as Flagg finished with an emphatic dunk. They must’ve run it a thousand times growing up. Nobody could stop it.

Instead, the friends talk on the phone four or five times a week, talking ball and swapping stories about old times. There are a lot of them.

Bedard and Flagg first met when they were 7 years old. Bedard had already heard buzz about the first grader holding his own on the court against kids two, three years older. Flagg had a reputation as a basketball savant before he could spell the word “savant.”

“I was amazed,” Bedard said. “The way he played, he had an understanding of the game at a very young age. He was playing up three grades, and he was getting buckets.”

That’s how it went for Flagg. He’d often be the youngest kid on the court, and yet parents would spin conspiracy theories of a forged birth certificate, because no one his age could be so refined.

Flagg was tall — 6-foot-1 or 6-foot-2 by middle school — and his former coach, Josh Grant, compared him to a deer running across ice. Bedard’s dad, Andy, who coached both boys’ Maine United AAU squads, suggested Flagg looked more like a baby giraffe, all limbs and length. But it wasn’t just the size that made Flagg a sensation. It’s that, for all the gangly incongruity of his frame as a middle schooler, he was undeniably graceful with a basketball in his hands.

“He had complete control over his body,” Andy Bedard said.

There’s debate over when Flagg first dunked. His mother, Kelly, insists he was doing no more than “rim grazing” in sixth grade, though there are those around Newport who might contest he flew before he walked. By the seventh grade, however, Flagg’s dunks were legendary.

“Every game, there was a poster dunk,” Ace, Cooper’s twin brother, said. “He’d dunk it, and the kids on the other team would start clapping.”

This is no exaggeration. Kaden Bedard remembers going through warmups, where Flagg would put on a show — windmills, 360s — and eventually the other team’s players would quit running their drills and assemble near midcourt to see what Flagg would do next.

Kelly remembers going to Massachusetts to play in tournaments, where kids already knew of Flagg’s reputation. They’d line up to have him sign their sneakers or basketballs before a game.

“We laughed about what his autograph used to look like,” Kelly said. “He could barely write in cursive.”

In eighth grade, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Flagg’s games were broadcast on YouTube. The family would get together at his grandparents’ house to watch. They’d place bets on how many dunks Flagg would get or wager on whether the opponent would score more points in the game than Flagg had in dunks.

He made it all look so effortless. He still does.

That’s how Flagg’s reputation grew outside his circle.

Inside his close circle of Maine hoopers and basketball parents — a group Kelly affectionately calls “the village” — they knew better. It’s the effort that defined him.

FLAGG’S SIXTH-GRADE coach, Gene Crockett, would take his dog out for walks in the morning, long before the sun came up, and he’d see Flagg out running. Flagg devoured the details of the basketball, and so refined was his understanding of the X’s and O’s that Grant routinely ran coaching decisions past the grade-schooler. The pickup games in the Bedards’ driveway were legendary — Cooper, Ace and Kaden playing one-on-one-on-one for hours on end, no one willing to give an inch, even if it required fouling Cooper routinely just to get a stop.

“Those games would go on forever,” Kaden said. “I remember once, getting up in the morning, doing a little workout, then playing one-on-one. We were there all day. When it got dark, we pulled a car up to the hoop and put the headlights on to keep playing.”

They were 9 years old at the time.

In the seventh grade, Flagg went to work with trainer Matt MacKenzie three days a week with the explicit goal of refining a skill set that, among middle schoolers in Maine, had no peers.

MacKenzie understood the challenge, so he routinely invented new ways to test Flagg — a short shot clock or a limit to the number of times Flagg could dribble or a rule that he couldn’t turn his back to the basket. Anything to push the kid.

He pit Flagg against bigger varsity high school players, and when that didn’t work, he brought in Division III players with speed, then he finally turned to a few players from University of Maine.

“All I could do,” MacKenzie said, “was stand there and shake my head like, ‘What am I going to do now? Call in guys from the G League?'”

It’s not just that Flagg held his own against bigger, faster, older players. It’s that he fed off the competition. He craved it. He’d do anything to get better.

Every so often, Kelly Flagg will thumb through social media and see a criticism of Cooper, something about how he never played in the 17U AAU circuit or accusations that he’s actually older and reclassified back to his original class this year at Duke. She tries to be even-keeled handling the trolls — though not always with great success — but she admits this stuff infuriates her. Because if there’s anything that has defined Cooper over his life, it’s that he has never wanted anything to come easily.

“Cooper is the most competitive person I’ve ever been around,” MacKenzie said. “He’s obsessed with winning. He was constantly seeking ways to gain an edge. He doesn’t want to hear how great he is. He wants to know what he needs to do better.”

During Cooper Flagg’s junior year at Montverde, he played in a tournament with his old AAU team, Maine United. They hadn’t practiced together much beforehand so they were out of sync, losing a consolation game of little consequence. Folks told him he’d be better off sitting it out, not wasting his energy.

“Good luck telling him not to play,” Andy Bedard said. “He’d give you the finger then go stand on the court.”

So Flagg played, and during one fierce possession in the paint, he got elbowed in the face. Flagg crumpled to the ground, blood pouring from his nose. Kelly rushed to her son and followed him back to the locker room. That should’ve been the end of it.

A few minutes later, during a timeout, Andy was set to give his team a speech about how the guys need to pick up their game in Flagg’s absence. Only, there was Flagg at the scorer’s table, a mask protecting his now broken nose, waiting to sub in.

“Coach,” Flagg said, “who am I going in for?”

Andy shook his head. What was he supposed to tell him? He plays — with car headlights illuminating the driveway or with a broken nose, whatever. He doesn’t leave the court.

“And my answer, of course, was, ‘Sub in for whoever you want,'” Andy said.

Months later, Grant struck up a conversation with Duke coach Jon Scheyer, and he posed a question that hardly needed answering: What was it about Flagg that so infatuated the Duke coaching staff? Why had they gone so hard in recruiting him?

Sure, Flagg was the No. 1 recruit in the country with a skill set any coach would drool over. But that wasn’t Scheyer’s response.

“It was that game,” Grant said. “He’s the most competitive kid you’ve ever been around. He just wanted to play, and he wanted to win so bad he didn’t care if half his face was torn off.”

MAX GOOD CALLS ’em like he sees ’em. He’s in his 80s now, a Maine basketball hall of famer who has coached all over the country, and he has mentored nearly two dozen future NBA players. He figures he knows a thing or two about the game.

Andy played for Good at Maine Central in the mid-1990s, and now he brings his old coach around to talk to his players and give them a dose of hard truths.

The truth, Good said, is Flagg was as talented as anyone he had ever seen, but he still had that look — the deer on ice look, the gangly kid from the middle of nowhere — that would make him a target.

“I said, ‘Look, Slim,'” Good recalled telling Flagg after their first meeting, “‘if you think these kids from Detroit or California are going to let you kick their ass, you’ve got another thing coming. They’re going to check your oil on every play, and you’d better get ready for it.'”

This was prophetic.

Away from the court, Flagg is relaxed and personable. He gushes over his teammates, uses NIL money to pay for equipment at Nokomis and holds camps to mentor young players in Maine. But when Maine United traveled outside of his home state, Flagg was almost always public enemy No. 1.

Flagg was hacked relentlessly, and MacKenzie said officials often let it go, because Flagg was simply bigger than everyone else, so they assumed he had it coming.

Kelly Flagg remembers going to tournaments in Boston where Cooper would drive the lane and dispatch some kid who, until that very second, assumed he was an NBA prospect, too. Parents would storm the court, point a finger in Cooper’s chest and scream at him. Cooper was in the fourth grade.

Years later, Flagg led his Under-17 World Cup team to a championship in Spain. Kelly, Cooper’s father Ralph and a small contingent of parents sat just behind the bench, as epithets rained down on them from furious locals perplexed by just how good the deer on ice turned out to be.

“There were 6,000 people screaming in Spanish,” Kelly said. “You couldn’t understand them, but you could tell they were not happy.”

Thing is, it’s not just that Cooper learned to tolerate the vitriol. It’s that it invigorated him.

If there’s an apex moment for Flagg during this season at Duke, it came early in the second half against Pitt. Flagg was whistled for a foul, and he was furious — at the ref, at himself. It didn’t matter. He was angry, and that’s bad news for anyone going against him.

On the next possession, he stole a pass, glided the length of the court, juked a defender, took off from a step inside the free throw line and delivered a windmill dunk that seemed the sum total of all his frustrations, erupting in one of the most ferocious baskets of the season in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

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Cooper Flagg puts a Pitt defender on a poster

Cooper Flagg gets the steal, then runs the floor and puts a Pitt defender on a poster.

“It’s like, the switch has been flipped, and he’s got this possessed look in his eyes where he’s just going to rip your heart out,” MacKenzie said.

“Crazy eyes,” Kelly calls it.

It happened frequently enough, Ace said, that opponents took note, too.

“The worse teams, the parents of those players were always extra nice,” Ace said. “Like, ‘Oh great shot, man.’ They tried to get mercy.”

Kaden Bedard remembers a game in second or third grade, the first time a team decided to go all-out to stop Flagg. They double-teamed him, face-guarded him and pressured him the whole game.

“And they couldn’t guard him,” Bedard said. “You could just tell he was enjoying it.”

Nothing got to Flagg more than when the crowd, well aware of his reputation, would chant “overrated,” his mother said. He’d have no choice but to prove them wrong.

Watch Duke’s regular-season finale against North Carolina, a game where early foul trouble had Flagg on the bench and the Tar Heels fans in a tizzy. By the second half, however, Flagg was batting away North Carolina shots with zeal, and after a monster dunk to pad Duke’s lead, he made a point of flexing for the crowd.

The lesson: Don’t make Flagg angry.

MacKenzie remembers running a one-on-one drill, where the offensive player had three seconds to score against a defender. Make a bucket, get the ball back. First to five points wins. The expressed purpose was to frustrate Flagg, to push him to the brink.

“Cooper felt like he was getting hacked,” MacKenzie said. “He was looking to our coaching staff to give him the call. We didn’t.”

Flagg got that look — the “crazy eyes” — then reeled off five straight buckets, shredding successive defenders, one after the other.

When he was done, he tossed the ball back to MacKenzie, looked him in the eye and quipped, “Nice drill. I’m going to get some f—ing water.”

ASK A MAINER: What’s your favorite Cooper Flagg play?

There are the dunks, of course. They’re fun, and everyone who cares about basketball there has seen them. But that’s never what comes up first.

Zach Gilpin was Maine’s high school basketball player of the year in 2014, and he later worked as a coach at his alma mater, Hampden, which played a preseason scrimmage against Nokomis during Flagg’s freshman year.

“I just remember his off-ball defense,” Gilpin said. “I bet he picked off four or five side-to-side passes. It’s just so impressive. To this day, regardless of grade, I’ve never seen a kid control a basketball game like that.”

Or there’s the game against Cony High that same year. Flagg saved a ball going out of bounds near the scorer’s table — leapt and grabbed it in the air, whirled 180 degrees and threw a baseball pass, one-handed, to a streaking teammate who laid it in for the bucket. He was always doing stuff like that — a good play that his court awareness and skill turned into pure magic.

“Everybody wanted to see him swat a block into the stands,” Andy said. “But he knew we needed possessions, so he’d just start catching shots. He’d tip balls to himself.”

One of Ace’s favorite memories of playing with his brother came during practice at Montverde. They were on opposite squads, both chasing after a loose ball. Cooper wrestled it from Ace, who remained prone on the court. Cooper looked down at his twin brother and flexed. Ace, angry, kicked him. They stood chest to chest, bumping into each other and jawing back and forth.

“That,” Ace said, “was a fun time.”

In a preseason clash of titans between Nokomis, the eventual Class A state champions, and South Portland, the eventual AA winners, Flagg came across the floor from the opposite wing to block a shot against the backboard on the first play of the game — a tone setter, Ralph Flagg said.

Nokomis won that game in double overtime. Three of their starters had fouled out by then, but Cooper Flagg — he did it all.

“I’m surprised they didn’t have him at the door selling tickets,” Andy Bedard said. “He did everything else.”

PRESSED TO MAKE his case for Flagg as this season’s national player of the year, Scheyer pointed to the freshman’s immense impact in so many areas of the game. What Flagg does, Scheyer said, no one else in the country can do.

And yet, if there’s one skill everyone seems to agree makes Flagg different, it’s that he understands the moment.

Grant calls it “winning time,” the moment when Flagg, often eager to be a distributor on the court, understands that it’s up to him to deliver a dagger.

Flagg lost one game in high school at Nokomis, early in the season to rival Brewer. His coach, Earl Anderson, remembers the aftermath. Flagg was livid. This wouldn’t happen again, he promised.

A few days later, Nokomis fell behind by 15 in the second quarter to Cony. Cony was using full-court pressure, hoping to frustrate Flagg. It didn’t.

By halftime, Nokomis was up by five. They ultimately won by 30. Never again, Flagg had promised.

Nokomis got revenge on Brewer twice that season, too, including once in the playoffs en route to a state title. After transferring to Montverde, Flagg led his new team to a national title. He dominated the EYBL’s Peach Jam with his Maine United team. He held his own against NBA players for the USA select team. In his first matchup at Duke against rival North Carolina, he so thoroughly dominated the first 10 minutes of the game that the Tar Heels never sniffed victory, then he did the same to close out a come-from-behind win against UNC last week.

The NCAA tournament is not like a high school game in Maine or an AAU showcase or a rivalry matchup in the regular season. Flagg may be more of a mythical figure in Newport than a real, live human being, but when Duke tips off with six games between the Blue Devils and a national title, he will still have much to prove.

And yet, no one who has seen him blossom will doubt his desire, his will to win, his ability to meet the moment, no matter how big. They’ve seen him do it too many times already.

“When it’s winning time,” Grant said, “in those moments, he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.”