Rest stop

 Saw a headline on ESPN's site this morning that made me chuckle a bit, because it was as inadvertently comic as it was inadvertently unaware. 

The headline said this: "Duke's Cooper Flagg Stars In Likely Last Game At Cameron."

"Cameron" being "Cameron Indoor Arena," Duke's notorious home court.

Cooper Flagg went for 28 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, three blocks and two steals there last night, as the Blue Devils euthanized Wake Forest 93-60. 

It was Flagg's 19th game in Cameron Indoor, counting exhibitions. It was his 30th game, total, as a Dukie.

This does not exactly make him a time-honored institution there, needless to say. Although he's now only 120 games behind Amilie Jefferson and 118 behind Christian Laettner and Kyle Singer, who played 150, 148 and 148 games in their time in Durham.

That's why the headline this morning made me chuckle, because it implied a degree of Duke-ly permanence that simply doesn't exist. This not Cooper Flagg's fault, understand. He's the product of his one-and-done culture, blessed by a phenomenal level of talent that ensured Duke would be a mere rest stop for him.

He is, after all, just 18 years old; when he played his first game for Duke back in November, he was still only 17. And yet he's the best player in the college game, and everyone knew before he stepped foot on campus he'd be the best player in the college game. He's that good.

It's why when Duke's season ends in a month or so, Cooper Flagg's association with Duke will end, too. 

As the consensus pick to go No. 1 in the NBA draft in June, off he'll go after his momentary ships-in-the-night brush with Joe College. The times being what they are, he might actually take a pay cut to (officially) turn pro.

What I want to know is this: Did the kid's "likely last game in Cameron" carry the poignancy implied by those words? Or any poignancy at all?

I'm sure it did, some, or at least Flagg had the manners to pretend it did. But every time a one-and-done is done with the one -- or, in this Wild West era, turns pro after playing for three or four schools -- I wonder what he really got from his college "experience."

If you're only there, for, what, six or seven months, are you really (in Flagg's case) a true blue Blue Devil? Have you been at your school long enough to learn the alma mater?  Long enough to discover the best pizza joint, or which hangout has a laissez faire approach to checking IDs?

Long enough that, if a visitor asks you where the library is, you can actually give him or her directions?

Me, I've always been intrigued by what sort of classes one-and-dones sign up for. Do you actually dip a toe in your school's academic rigor? Or is it more like this:

One-and-done: Hey, what classes are you taking this semester?

Actual student: Oh, the usual. The Dynamics Of Muslim/Christian Interaction In The Balkans Between 1345 And 1450 ... Murder, Guilt And The Social Isolation Of Edgar Allen Poe ... that sort of thing. You?

One-and-done: I'm takin' this class where we watch movies and then talk about 'em. We're already up to "Rocky III."

After which Actual Student asks if One-and-Done is taking any serious classes. The kind that count toward, say, a degree in business or law or internal medicine.

One-and-Done has a ready answer for that, I figure.

"I dunno," he says. "They got any degrees in Damn Glad To Meetcha?"