Cooper Flagg Signing to New Balance Is the Intelligent Choice

New Balance stands for the Flagg. The New England footwear brand has signed potential number one NBA 2025 draft pick and local Northeast boy Cooper Flagg to an endorsement deal, New Balance announced on Monday. Some were thrilled to hear that Flagg had signed to New Balance, which has been on a hot streak in the lifestyle space for the past half decade. Others were disappointed that Flagg, the 17-year-old, 6’9 forward that’s off to Duke, didn’t sign to Nike or Jordan Brand. And it might have been the best move.

Flagg signing to New Balance just makes sense, on many levels. First things first, he grew up in the small town of Newport, Maine, with a population of a touch over 3,000. That’s about 30 minutes from two of New Balance’s Maine factories, in Skowhegan and Norridgewock. New Balance played off this in the advertisement that announced Flagg’s signing.

In the video spot, Flagg plays basketball in what’s presumably his childhood driveway in Newport, dressed head to toe in New Balance. A younger paperboy, who looks plucked right out of The Sandlot or a 1950s LL Bean catalog and is wearing 550s, comes and tosses the morning news at the feet of Flagg’s Fresh Foam BB v2s.

The paper reads, “Cooper Flagg, the Intelligent Choice.” The same slogan can be seen on the tongue of his sneakers. It’s a smart play on the “Intelligent Choice” slogan New Balance has been using in recent years. Aime Leon Dore used in an ad for its 997s from 2019. The phrase traces back to the 1980s, when New Balance described itself on its shoe boxes, “A more intelligent approach to building footwear.”

Using that slogan to say Flagg made the smart choice of signing to New Balance fits perfectly. Flagg is also viewed as a “smart kid”—he’s going to Duke and has a 4.10 GPA. The connection works. It also conjures some excitement for sneaker nerds and connoisseurs of New Balance, a segment of the business that New Balance has tried hard to appease while it still moves into the future.

On court at Montverde Academy, Flagg has been a Nike guy, frequently wearing Kobes. Off-court, he’s worn a lot of Jordan sneakers. One sneaker blog wrote a whole story speculating that he’d sign with Jordan Brand. Many people often speculate, or rationalize in their minds, that the biggest basketball players have to sign to the biggest brand, re: Nike. But they don’t always. At Nike, he may just be another name on the roster, especially as the brand expands into the WNBA and will be cranking out more signature shoes by the time he’s in the NBA.

We’re also in some unchartered territory when it comes to someone like Flagg getting a sneaker deal. Flagg can be signed to whatever brands he wants, but he still has to honor the school’s sponsor obligations. He hasn’t even played one minute in college, forget the NBA. But it’s the new era we’re in and we have to see how everything shakes out. At Duke, he’ll still be wearing Nikes on court and likely New Balance off-court. It seems like a good deal, as the brand is one of the coolest when it comes to the mesh running trend and limited collaborations from the likes of Joe Freshgoods, Salehe Bembury, Action Bronson, and Ronnie Fieg. It will make Flagg stand out.

New Balance basketball has its question marks, though. The brand took a break from the sport for over a decade until Kawhi Leonard signed to NB in 2018. Since then, the shoes have been received with mixed reviews. Last year, the Kawhi 3 and the Fresh Foam BB both needed to be recalled due to potential quality issues.

Others have said, though, that a big prospect like Flagg on the roster will compel New Balance to dial in to give him a breakout shoe, much like Adidas did for Anthony Edwards and the AE1.

It looks like New Balance is ready to make moves in basketball, too, as it recently promoted Kevin Trotman, who worked on the brand’s collaboration space, to a product manager on basketball footwear. Hopefully he’ll capture some of that same energy.

Cooper Flagg playing for Maine United. Image via Getty

Maybe New Balance promised Flagg something special. It’s likely they wrote a bigger check than Nike and Jordan. Maybe they made him feel like more of a priority. Maybe it was all or some of that coupled with Flagg wanting to stick true to his Maine roots.

According to the New Balance press release, Flagg used to go to the annual New Balance tent sale at the Skowhegan factory with his mom and get sneakers.

“I grew up wearing New Balance, and I appreciate their authentic connection to my community. The focus and growth of the brand in basketball and our shared values and history drew me in,” Flagg said in the release.

Growing up a couple hours away in New Hampshire, I remember going to Skowhegan as a kid. It felt like a place trapped in time. We went to an old local museum that was more of a roadside attraction. But it felt magical, like I was transported into yesteryear. In 2017, I got a chance to visit the brand’s Skowhegan factory. New Balance kept stressing to us that generations of local Mainers worked there. People got jobs and didn’t leave, and passed it on.

So it’s only logical that Cooper Flagg wanted to sign to New Balance. A kid from rural Maine doesn’t usually become the top basketball prospect in the country and a signee of a big sneaker deal.

“You can’t get there from here,” people in Maine would say. But he found his way.

Read the full article here