Brian Scalabrine will never forget the first time he saw Cooper Flagg.

Scalabrine, the former NBA forward, received a call from a trainer he knew named Matt Mackenzie, claiming he was working with a 13-year-old kid who could hold his own against players at the University of Maine. Scalabrine was very skeptical, but invited Flagg down to play a pickup game against him and some of the best AAU players in the Boston Area just to see.

“He was the best player on the floor. It wasn’t even close,” Scalabrine, a co-host of "The Starting Lineup" on SiriusXM, told Newsday on Tuesday. “This is a kid who got out of a car after a four-hour drive to go play pickup. And he was unbeatable.

“I told him, you are making it to the NBA. I don't know if you are playing 20 years or five years. I don’t know i

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