ORONO — There were weeks to go before the NBA Draft , before the night that would change his life. But Cooper Flagg’s thoughts, for a moment, were not on where he was going, but where he had been.

He and trainer Matt MacKenzie were having breakfast in Los Angeles in late May, planning their coming workouts, when the timeline got to early June. And for a minute, Flagg got wistful.

“He said ‘Hey, I think that’s the day my old classmates graduate back at Nokomis High School,” MacKenzie said. “Then he kind of thought of it for a second, and he was like ‘Man, that would be really cool if I could go to that and be with those guys as they march.’ I kind of looked at him and said ‘Well, you can be.’ He said, ‘You think so?’ ‘Of course.'”

A few hours and some phone calls to agents later, the p

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