Inside the mind of Duke's Cooper Flagg: 'He wants to destroy his competition’

NEWARK, N.J. — Kelly Flagg remembers the scene like it was yesterday.

Her twin boys, Cooper and Ace, were playing the popular video game, "Just Dance" on the Nintendo Wii at the age of four. They were dancing to the song "The Ants Go Marching" and after Cooper won the first game, Ace hugged his brother and let him know how proud he was of him.

"It was such a vivid memory for me," Kelly said. "Cooper and Ace were so competitive playing the game."

When the next song came on, it was Ace who won, but the reception from his brother was quite different, as Cooper proceeded to cross his arms, turn away, and, according to Kelly, was "very mad."

Kelly proceeded to teach her son the lesson of being a classy winner, and that's when it hit her that she had a very different type of kid in her family room. 

"That competitive drive comes from within," Kelly said of Cooper. "He won't accept any other way than being the best at whatever it is he's doing. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be baseball, football, soccer – heck, even cornhole! He makes everything a competition. Everything that we try to do, he wants to win, and he wants to destroy his competition."

The son of Ralph, a former basketball player at Eastern Maine Community College, and Kelly, who was a part of four NCAA Tournament teams during her time at the University of Maine, Cooper's work ethic and drive originate from his family's deep basketball roots. 

Kelly, who spent time coaching her sons with their Maine United AAU program, knows when to play the motherly role with her two boys, but she also makes it a point to always be honest with them, which is due to understanding their desires in life.

"I'm a realist. I've never, ever sugarcoated anything," Kelly said. "I