Early-morning runs, autograph signings and so many dunks: Tales of a young Cooper Flagg - ESPN

Editor's note: Cooper Flagg suffered a left ankle injury late in the first half of Duke's ACC Tournament quarterfinal game against Georgia Tech on Thursday.

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's grandparents maintain a camp and are building a new home. 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 cellphone 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,