CHARLOTTE—As Duke Blue Devils forward Cooper Flagg was being pushed around the lower bowels of the Spectrum Center, the wheelchair he was in came upon a black crossover in the middle of the hallway.

The small, rubberized ramp a few inches high protected the various cables needed for ESPN’s broadcast to run from the court to the satellite trucks sitting outside on a pleasant Thursday afternoon at the ACC tournament. 

A number of school officials looked down at the obstacle in muted annoyance, briefly staring down unsure of what to do next. Flagg stood up on his right leg and helped pull the wheelchair over before sitting back down, speeding off with renewed urgency the 20 or so feet before disappearing into the Charlotte Hornets’ X-ray facilities. 

Duke hopes that temporary speed bump for Flagg, and the team, is all it will have to endure in the wake of a 78–70 comeback victory over the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets—a contest that was about far more than just the final score three days before Selection Sunday, given the potential impact the quarterfinal could have on the national championship picture. 

With just under three minutes to play in the first half, the freshly minted ACC Player of the Year had skied for a rebound off a missed Jaeden Mustaf three-point shot. As he was coming down with the rest of the nine players on the court beginning to run back in transition, Flagg landed on the back of big man Baye Ndongo’s foot, twisting his ankle and sending his off-pink Nikes near parallel with the ground. 

After spending a few minutes on the court immediately gripping his left leg, Flagg limped toward the bench. Eventually he braced himself on a chair before slamming his fist down in obvious frustration, nearly audible amid the stunned silence from the throngs of Duke fans in attendance for what was supposed to be a three-day coronation for the program.

Instead, in-arena theatrics were the only thing capable of providing a modicum of energy across large swaths of stunned faces as Flagg was carried to the locker room by a teammate and trainer.

In that moment, it would be hard for any fans clad in blue to wonder if their best shot at a national championship in the youthful afterglow of a post–Coach K era disappeared right down the tunnel along with Flagg. 

More than a few who were old enough likely conjured up parallels of Kenyon Martin’s infamous broken leg in the 2000 Conference USA quarterfinals 25 years ago. The former Cincinnati Bearcats forward was named the consensus national player of the year and had positioned Bob Huggins’s squad as one of the pre-tournament favorites in the days leading up to the injury, trending toward the No. 1 overall seed.

Martin, however, never returned to action and the Bearcats crashed out the next weekend in a loss to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane that lives on in the pantheon of college basketball what ifs.

“He just came down, sprained his ankle. X-rays were negative, which is great, but we just have to understand there will be swelling,” coach Jon Scheyer said after the game to allay fears that nothing was broken. “We’ll see how he recovers and how we go from here.”

Scheyer later cast doubt on his star freshman’s return for the rest of the ACC tournament this week, calling it a “long shot,” but the hope is that Flagg’s injury is more reminiscent of Paul Pierce in the 2008 NBA Finals. The Boston Celtics captain memorably left in a wheelchair late in Game 1 with an apparent knee issue, only to come back a few minutes later in a series his team ultimately triumphed in. 

Though Flagg was wheeled out of the locker room to the X-ray facilities at halftime, he returned to the bench but did not step back on the court, getting his ankle retaped and then spending much of the rest of the game watching alongside Jose Fonseca, Duke’s associate director of athletic medicine and head trainer. 

“It hurt to see one of my brothers go down,” said Blue Devils guard Isaiah Evans, who finished with 14 points. “We all just want to see each other play ball, this is what we do. When someone goes down, it’s hard.”

Evans played a role in a furious 29–16 second-half run for his team out of the break that ultimately proved decisive in a game against Georgia Tech, which was not limited to Flagg’s injury either.

Just a few minutes prior, forward Maliq Brown let out a very loud curse word as he grabbed his shoulder going up for a rebound in the first half and had to be helped back to the locker room, too. Scheyer said a stretcher was brought out to help him to a local hospital, with doctors saying the junior had re-separated his shoulder. 

Brown separated his shoulder on Thursday.
Brown separated his shoulder on Thursday. | Rich Barnes-Imagn Images

If that was the extent of the Blue Devils’ issues on Thursday, that might have been a sigh of relief given the team has learned to play without the quality wing when he missed time with the same issue earlier this season. Unfortunately, it wasn’t and Brown could be out several weeks to add to the misery those around the program were going through in one of the more pyrrhic victories they’ve recorded this season.

Even if Flagg can return—be it at some point in the rest of the ACC tournament or in the next few weeks of March Madness—it remains to be seen if he can be as effective as he was in building the case to be the national player of the year this season and the eventual No. 1 NBA draft pick this summer. The freshman from Maine led the Blue Devils in nearly every major statistical category and helped put together one of the most dominant runs in league play the illustrious basketball conference had ever seen. 

The worst part for the Duke fans who lined up around the Spectrum Center well before brunch was over in Charlotte is that they have been through this before, a superstar injury ill-timed for a squad that looks perfectly capable of cutting down the nets next month.

Kyrie Irving’s toe injury in 2011 sapped most of the superstar freshman guard’s time around Cameron Indoor Stadium, with his return just before the NCAA tournament turning into a disappointing Sweet 16 exit. Zion Williamson, who suffered a leg injury when his shoe blew out in late February 2019, missed six games down the stretch of the regular season but ended up bowing out with Duke in the Elite Eight.

When both were healthy before injuries, the team looked like the best in the land. Afterward, a hastened reintegration disrupted team chemistry enough to where that wasn’t the case by the time the Big Dance rolled around.

Flagg’s importance to this current iteration cannot be overstated. Not only is he the team’s best player, he’s the tone-setter.

Just a few minutes in real time before his injury, that was evident when Duke was struggling to get much of anything done on either end of the floor against the Yellow Jackets, trailing by double figures and off to an 0-of-13 start behind the arc. Flagg, showing off impressive hops, skied high from behind for a thunderous block of Duncan Powell’s layup. The ball careened off the backboard with such power that it essentially started a fast break on its own, leading to an Evans three that injected some much-needed life into the arena.

“[Flagg] getting hurt was unfortunate,” Georgia Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “Duke is a good team. They can go figure it out, which they probably will figure it out. They have a lot of talented guys.”

Stoudamire didn’t have to say Kon Knueppel’s name out loud, but he was certainly thinking it after the freshman, something of a Robin to Flagg’s Batman this season, poured in a game-high 28 points to torch the Yellow Jackets for a second time in conference play.

“Kon plays at a great pace. He has great size, which allows him to score over the top or pass,” Scheyer said. 

Still, Duke is merely a good team with Knueppel leading the line—something that means little over the coming days in a historically weak ACC. Perhaps that will still be enough to cut down the nets on Saturday night, but that is of little consequence for a team that has been rolling along the past three months aiming to do it in San Antonio a month from now.

“It’s not really about one person or two people. It’s about Duke,” Evans said. “Duke is gonna handle business all the time. That’s what we came ready to do. We came here to play ball. So no matter the circumstances, whatever happens throughout the game, we’re going to try to keep playing.”

Bump in the road or not, that’s all they can do at the moment.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cooper Flagg’s Ankle Injury Casts Pall Over Duke’s National Title Aspirations.