Now that Victor Wembanyama is in the NBA, Cooper Flagg has perhaps the strongest case for being the best basketball prospect in the world. Flagg is either the No. 1 or 2 recruit in the class of 2025 depending on the scouting service you are using, and the 6’9 wing turned heads earlier this summer at Peach Jam with his AAU squad, Maine United.
Flagg is getting to the point of being a household name for basketball fans beyond the folks who follow prospects closely, and a recent story from Brian Scalabrine certainly helps his cause. The long and the short of it: Scalabrine claimed that Flagg played 1-on-1 against Phoenix Suns guard Bradley Beal at Jayson Tatum’s basketball camp. Beal wasn’t going full bore, Flagg started to score on him, began talking trash, and got Beal “really mad.”
Cooper Flagg was allegedly cooking Bradley Beal in a 1v1, per @Scalabrine
“I heard a rumor that my boy Cooper Flagg was at Jayson Tatum’s camp and he was busting Brad Beal 1-on-1, and Brad Beal got mad at him. Started cussing him out…This dude is a major trash-talker. … So I… pic.twitter.com/OSp3QorUTS
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) August 2, 2023
It is a very funny story, but according to one of the folks involved in this, it’s not true. The Instagram account @leaguealerts posted the story on Wednesday morning, and apparently, Beal saw it and said the whole thing was a lie.
A more skeptical person would say that Beal would obviously stress that this is not true because no NBA player would admit they got mad over trash talk by a high schooler who took it to them. But this is also a pretty wild story, and we’re willing to take Beal’s word on this one until video pops up to indicate otherwise or Flagg pushes back on it.