How will Duke basketball use Cooper Flagg? Coach Jon Scheyer has plenty of options
Jon Scheyer spent last spring building a roster designed to maximize Cooper Flagg’s immense talent.
Now, with exhibition games approaching and the regular season fewer than 20 days away, the Duke head coach continues to work with different lineups designed to use Flagg’s skills in the most effective way.
Take Tuesday’s practice, for example. It was a semi-public event, as hundreds of Duke Children’s Hospital donors were allowed into Cameron Indoor Stadium to view the team’s nearly two hours of work.
Nearly a dozen NBA talent evaluators were there, too, since the 6-9 Flagg is already projected as the top prospect for next summer’s NBA Draft.
During the practice, Flagg showed his ability to impact the game from anywhere on the court as the Blue Devils shuffled five different quintets, all involving him.
Flagg can get in the lane and score, of course. But he can also handle the ball out front in half-court sets to set up baskets for his teammates while also creating his own shots.
Defensively, Flagg is able to protect the rim in situations where he’s the tallest Duke player on the court. That was the case with one lineup where he was on the court with 6-9 forward Maliq Brown, 6-6 forward Kon Knueppel, 6-5 guard Tyrese Proctor and 6-6 guard Sion James.
As Scheyer said earlier this month, Flagg’s versatility opens up so many options.
“Cooper is incredibly easy to play with,” Scheyer said. “He just makes the game very simple for everybody else on the floor.”
To that end, watching Duke’s coaching staff using different groupings showed the many ways they expect the Blue Devils to win games this season.
Flagg’s versatility on display
The starting five with Flagg and Knueppel along with 7-2 Khaman Maluach, 6-5 guard Caleb Foster and 6-6 guard Mason Gillis offers superior shot-blocking ability. That also works nicely when, with Flagg running the offense, he’s able to zip a pass from the free throw line inside to a posting-up Maluach for an easy dunk.
In another half-court set, with Proctor having replaced Knueppel in that grouping, Flagg drove the lane and, with the defense converging on him, tossed a kick-out pass to Proctor for a wide-open 3-pointer.
Of course, Flagg can also show his own skills, like when Maluach was in a blue jersey and the white-jerseyed Flagg drove the lane and dunked over the lanky center.
However, don’t take that as a knock on Maluach’s defense. He’s active and vocal when manning the middle of the defense in the half court and runs the court well in transition.
On the subject of lineups, while Flagg was always in the white jersey, Knueppel was with him on four of the five groupings. That shows what the staff thinks of his skills.
Proctor and Foster were on four of them as well, though not always together. They are the only two players on this season’s Duke team that have started games for the Blue Devils, so it makes sense they are heavily involved.
Gillis, the Purdue transfer with an impressive 3-point shooting history, found himself in Flagg’s group twice as did Brown, who led the ACC in steals at Syracuse last season before transferring to Duke.
Possible Duke rotation
At this point, those eight players are in the best positions to be in the rotation. They all are effective defensively and are meshing well with Flagg.
“I feel we have the pieces to have a really good team,” Scheyer said last week. “You can see we’re still far away from putting it all together. We need to be a defensive minded team. And you know, naturally, as a younger team, you think about offense more. But for us, that’s going to be the step where we can really become a special team when we’re thinking about defense, first, second and third, and then the offense will take care of itself.”
The only injury that’s impacting the rotation’s development is 6-11 freshman Patrick Ngongba, who is still not practicing due to a foot injury. Ngongba is no longer primarily using a walking boot. While his teammates practiced on Tuesday, he was on the sidelines pedaling a stationary bike.
Duke has two exhibition games coming up at Cameron Indoor Stadium, beginning with Saturday’s 1 p.m. matchup with Lincoln (Pa.), a Division II HBCU. That’s followed by Bobby Hurley’s return to Cameron Indoor Stadium on Oct. 27 when he coaches Arizona State against Duke in a charity exhibition to benefit Duke Children’s Hospital.
The Blue Devils open the regular season on Nov. 4 against Maine, notable because Flagg hails from Newport, Maine.