Cooper Flagg is in the perfect era of basketball. Not only is the Duke standout the talk of the NBA town already, but the 17-year-old has joined as a freshman in the peak NIL era. Although it was introduced only in 2021, 2024 has seen a number of record-breaking deals with college athletes. Just look at JuJu Watkins’ Nike deal or more to our point, Flagg’s signing with New Balance.

The sports giant has been steadily crossing hairs with Nike and Adidas and first got into college basketball with Cameron Brink at Stanford. NB is now building its roster in the NCAA, but adding Cooper Flagg might have been a bit of a tossup. Reason? Duke is a Nike university, so their latest freshman talent is forbidden from wearing New Balance inside athletic complexes or on official team business.

However, Flagg can wear the brand on campus in general, for separate USA Basketball initiatives, or for the upcoming New Balance global brand and lifestyle campaigns. Per Sportico, the 2023-24 Gatorade National Player of the Year “will also get a chance to work with streetwear collaborators and promote other non-basketball products and consumer experiences.” This could include golf, which, like Caitlin Clark, Cooper Flagg enjoys playing away from the hardwood.

Does New Balance mind this limited visibility? Not really. Flagg’s current 5-year deal will see his first year as a regular endorsement deal but the rest will be a more standard endorsement deal that star pro athletes garner. To foster a long-term relationship with the athletes they sign, New Balance’s chief marketing officer Chris Davis said in an interview that the company focuses more on who their signees are as people.

“We never make the wrong decision because we’re so focused on who these athletes are as humans,” he said. In Cooper Flagg’s case, his past certainly aligns with what New Balance could be looking for, given that he and his family were regular buyers of the brand merch before every school year. It also helped that he lived in Newport, Maine, about 30 miles away from New Balance’s domestic manufacturing facilities and a few hours away from its Boston headquarters.

But Flagg, expected to have a Zion Williamson-like impact at Duke, is already in demand for never-seen-before NIL deals.

With Zion Williamson comparisons, NIL takes Cooper Flagg to new heights

Zion Williamson was the star of Duke before Cooper Flagg came along. Playing in the 2018-2019 season, Williamson was two years removed from the advent of NIL, but one similarity these two share is their NBA pick ranks. Williamson was selected first overall in the NBA draft while Flagg is largely expected to be in the same spot in 2025.

Joe Pompliano even said of the Blue Devils player’s impact on the school on his YouTube channel, “The school added 358,000 Instagram followers during his time there more than all other college basketball programs combined during that time.”

Flagg recently became the first men’s college basketball player to receive a deal from Gatorade. Already a hyped name in high school, the 17-year-old has already reached milestones that most don’t achieve in their entire careers. His NIL worth, valued at $2.6 million per On3, is only going to rise steadily and all we can do is sit back and watch his rise to phenom status!