Cooper Flagg, the highly touted incoming freshman for the Duke men’s basketball team, has signed an NIL deal with New Balance. The 2024 Gatorade National Player of the Year from Newport, Maine, becomes the latest signing for the footwear brand’s growing basketball division, which features prominent NBA talents like Kawhi Leonard and Tyrese Maxey.
Flagg, the nation’s top high school prospect, averaged 16.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 3.7 steals and 3.7 blocks per game for Montverde Academy in Florida last year. Like another transcendent prep phenom-turned-Blue Devil in Zion Williamson, Flagg is also viewed as the potential top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.
Flagg grew up 25 miles away from the company’s Skowhegan, Maine, manufacturing factory, giving the signing a boyhood connection. “I grew up wearing New Balance, and I appreciate their authentic connection to my community,” Flagg said in a press release. “The focus and growth of the brand in basketball and our shared values and history drew me in. From day one, it was clear that this would be a family-like partnership. I’m so excited to join this family and help them grow the category with young athletes.”
New Balance has made inroads outside of its running and cross-training shoe roots in recent years. Leonard signed with the brand in 2018, and the company has built a solid roster of NBA talent since with Maxey, Zach Lavine, Jamal Murray, Darius Garland and Dejounte Murray.
“It’s a testament to the strength of the brand the past few years and the symbol of where the basketball category is heading at New Balance,” Naveen Lokesh, the company’s head of sports marketing for basketball, said when asked what signing Flagg means for its hoops group. “Cooper adds to an existing roster of basketball athletes that will spur on New Balance’s continued growth in the basketball category and in the footwear industry as a whole.”
Duke, which has not immediately responded to Sportico’s request for comment, has a contract with Nike as the exclusive supplier of uniforms, footwear, equipment and merchandise through 2027. As a result, Flagg’s new marketing deal will not allow him to wear New Balance sneakers while playing at Duke.
Flagg is not the only major signing for the Boston-based company this summer. In July, New Balance inked a multiyear agreement with the WNBA while extending its relationship with Los Angeles Sparks rookie Cameron Brink, whom the brand signed to an NIL deal in 2023 when she starred at Stanford.
The NIL deal is another feather in the cap for the 17-year-old Flagg, who was chosen to work out with the U.S. men’s basketball team as it prepared to play in the Paris Olympics. He was the first collegiate player (and first teenager) tabbed for the Select Team since 2013.
