Cooper Flagg family: Who is father Ralph and mother Kelly?

Duke blueness Devils participant Cooper Flagg is the basketball world’s latest obsession. He has recently been making headlines for being the projected No.1 pick for the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Draft 2025. With his impressive stats from 2024 and record-setting abilities, everyone is wondering where this 18-year-old gets his skills from. Turns out, just one look at the Flagg family tree makes it clear that the sport runs in his blood.

Ralph Flagg’s passion for the sport arose during his time at Nokomis Regional High School and fully blossomed when he started playing college basketball at Eastern Maine Community College. He met his now-wife Kelly shortly after at a basketball court of all places, and the spark between the two was evident from the beginning.

The pair wed in the early 2000s and gave birth to a premature set of twins (Hunter and Ryder) on August 4, 2004. However, due to complications, Ryder died two days later, while Hunter remained in the neonatal intensive care unit for 109 days before being discharged.

Cooper has always made it a point to credit his father for building his passion and dedication towards basketball. In a January 2025 interview with Blue Devil Nation, Cooper said, “Getting back in the gym with my dad [is how I stay ready]. I grew up in the gym with my dad. Late nights, early mornings, with him just rebounding for me.”

For those who will now be quick to associate Kelly with simply being Cooper’s mother, it’s important to emphasize her success as a college basketball player back in the 1990s. Her journey with the sport also began at Nokomis Regional High School, where she racked up an impressive 1,257 career points.

This love for the sport carried forward during her four years playing for the University of Maine from 1995 to 1999. During this time, she helped her team secure tickets to four NCAA tournaments and captained them during their historic win against arch-nemesis Stanford in the 1999 NCAA Tournament. She later even returned to her high school to coach the varsity girls’ team.

Ralph spoke about his wife’s basketball prowess in a 2024 interview with ESPN, referring to her up-and-under move as “pretty deadly,” describing her as a “fierce competitor.” She has championed Cooper’s career since the very beginning and makes it a point to always be there to cheer him on. “I like to sit by the same person or in the same seating order. [Ralph], on game days, he wears anything but Duke gear,” she told People in March 2025.

Her love for her son and his sport even landed her in hot water during the ACC Tournament in March 2025, where her celebratory reaction to Cooper making a dunk against the University of North Carolina was considered rude by many fans. She later issued a social media statement on the matter, which read, “I want to apologize to anyone who was offended by my language that was caught in a celebratory moment. I do realize that it wasn’t my best look. [It was] a moment of being so proud of our kid and also a big F-you to the entire Carolina fan base for being classless a-holes.”

Cooper’s twin brother Ace played on the same team at Nokomis Regional High School as him and the two led the team to victory in the state championship along with their elder brother Hunter. Ace helped his team at Montverde Academy in Florida win a state championship two years later and also helped the Greensboro Day School in North Carolina clinch a state title in February 2025. Ace is now playing at the University of Maine while Hunter pursues a degree in sports management there.

By Stuti Gupta

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