Cooper Flagg’s career is managed by a former sixth-grade science teacher of 25 years.
His mother, Kelly Flagg, added brand manager to her resume when the Dallas Mavericks selected the 6-foot-9 Duke product with the No. 1 overall pick in April’s NBA draft.
It is something she is still processing, along with a whirlwind move to Texas to support Cooper in his career after spending 40 years in her hometown of Newport, Maine.
In just a brief time, she’s gone from the little-known mother of three high school basketball stars — Hunter, Cooper and Ace Flagg — to helping run the career of one of the more hyped NBA prospects in recent memory.
“I’m now kind of managing Cooper’s career, so to speak,” Kelly told The Post while speaking on behalf of her partnership with Dr. Scholl’s, a footwear brand spotlighting real moms. “I’m the go-between between the agency and the brand partners and everything. So, I’m sort of his brand manager.
“And that keeps me very busy, as well as still being mom and playing the mom role … So, I just try to handle all the day-to-day stuff.
“I taught sixth grade science for 25 years and I retired from that two years ago to move to Florida to be with Cooper and [his twin brother] Ace to support them — and what was coming along with all the opportunities that they were getting. So, we just felt that it made sense for us to be near them. And I continued on in that role for the last two years.”
Kelly, who taught her three sons as students, is still figuring out what her new normal looks like.
For instance, she rushed home to her new Dallas residence to make this interview because she was shopping for groceries for Cooper’s apartment.
Ace, a 6-foot-8 freshman forward, committed to play college basketball for the Maine Black Bears this fall.
In Cooper’s one year at Duke, he madeat least $28 million through NIL endorsement deals with New Balance and Fanatics, according to ESPN’s Howard Bryant.
Balancing being mom-ager
Kelly was candid about juggling her role in Cooper’s career and being mom to the 18-year-old basketball phenom.
“I think for most of the time, I’m just mom, and I try to pick and choose the times where we have real conversations about business things,” she said. “So I’ll say, ‘Can you give me five minutes? I need to go over the schedule with you and I need you to make some decisions about some things.’
“I try not to just constantly inundate him with that stuff … I’ll go through an agenda, but try to keep it quick and short because he’s 18 and his attention span is still pretty short for that kind of stuff.
“The biggest thing is that he makes all the decisions, and that’s important to his dad [Ralph Flagg] and I that this is his business and he’s running the show. We don’t want to make decisions for him that aren’t things that he wants to do. So we always run things by him, and I think that that’s really important. I think sometimes parents can get themselves in trouble where they are making all the decisions and down the road, there can be resentment. And I don’t ever want that to be the case.”
Kelly said she is up for the task of balancing Cooper’s NBA games and Ace’s college games this fall.
“We’ll have a rental [home] in Maine during the winter so that we can go back and forth and catch as many of Ace’s games as possible and check in with Hunter,” she said.
She’s not chasing the spotlight
Kelly said she’s still figuring out the newfound attention, even as she lands brand deals of her own, such as Dr. Scholl’s.
“It’s a lot … everybody asks me all the time, ‘How are you handling all of it?’ And quite frankly, I don’t have time to even process what we’ve just gone through in the last few months, because so much is coming at us so quickly that it’s kind of a whirlwind,” Kelly said.
“But as far as for me, I’ve always been a busy mom. I’ve just been busy in different ways … as far as being in the spotlight myself, I don’t really feel like I’m in it — or I try not to be in the spotlight. It’s not something that I’m necessarily chasing. I know I’ve put myself in some situations that have maybe given me more of a spotlight, but I just try to be a supportive mom to all my kids.”
Kelly drew some attention for a viral celebration — appearing to shout “on his f–king head” after a Flagg dunk as he led Duke to a win over rival North Carolina in March.
She laughed at idea of being an influencer. Instead, Kelly prefers mom, whose goal is to help other moms in similar positions.
“I think there are a lot of people that appreciate that and a lot of moms that see a lot of themselves in me and kind of my journey and what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m just a normal, regular mom who happens to have kids that are really good at sports, and luckily one has excelled and gotten a much bigger spotlight.”
Rooted in basketball
Kelly, a 1,000-point scorer in high school, was the captain of the women’s basketball team at the University of Maine in the late 1990s and helped the women’s team defeat Stanford University to win the program’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game in the 1998–99 season.
That team was inducted into the school’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2021.
Meanwhile, patriarch Ralph played basketball for Eastern Maine Community College.
Cooper has said that one-on-one matchups at home with his mom would get intense.
In 2022, Flagg, along with Hunter and Ace, helped the Nokomis Regional High School basketball team in Maine secure a state championship.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills proclaimed June 25, 2025, as “Cooper Flagg Day,” calling the 18-year-old a “source of tremendous pride for Maine” on the evening he was selected as the top pick.
“I lived in Newport, Maine my entire life until two years ago and for 40-something years. So I won’t tell you exactly how old I am, but that’s close enough,” Kelly said. “And if you had told me five or six years ago that I would be living in Dallas or moved to Florida, I would have thought you were crazy.
“So, it’s funny how life has changed in a very short amount of time.”
