'Nerd' Kingston Flemings knows he could be an analyst or a scout; instead, he'll be a first-round draft pick

Kington Flemings knows ball. Several years ago, he correctly predicted the rise of the Detroit Pistons as they came off a miserable season in which they went a league-worst 14-68. Flemings, who was not yet a senior in high school, told Houston assistant coach Kellen Sampson that the Pistons were building something, that they'd make a leap the following season and be ready to compete in 2025-26, at which point Cade Cunningham would be a superstar.

"I kind of rolled my eyes as I'm having this conversation on the phone, " Sampson said. "'You're nuts.' He says, 'I'm telling you.'"

Now, Flemings thinks the Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz are going to ascend like the Pistons. They finished this past season at the bottom of their respective conferences, but added talent at the trade deadline and own the top two picks in Tuesday's NBA Draft. Both teams, he predicted, will at least make the Play-In next season, and the Jazz in particular look legit. Flemings likes Utah's young core, headlined by Keyonte George, Ace Bailey and whoever it drafts.

"And then the frontcourt's crazy," Flemings said. "You got Jaren Jackson Jr., Walker Kessler if they re-sign him, you got Lauri Markkanen. I definitely believe in that team."

How many 19-year-old draft prospects are aware that Walker Kessler is a free agent? Flemings is a 6-foot-3 guard blessed with supersonic speed and a 40-inch vertical, but "in another life, he could be a 5-10 college sophomore that would be in like 10 different fantasy leagues," Sampson said. "He would be playing DraftKings every night."

Flemings has been on a bit of a media tour lately: No Dunks, All The Smoke, Numbers On The Board. A few weeks ago, when ESPN was in his hometown of San Antonio for the Finals, he joined the "NBA Today" set. Near the end of his segment, host Malika Andrews said he was an "awesome interview" and must have impressed the teams he'd met with. Brennan High School coach Koty Cowgill, who started coaching him in first grade and works with him to this day, went even further: If ESPN hired Flemings tomorrow, he could sit in the analyst chair and do the job "at an elite level."

"Yeah, I could be an analyst, I could be a coach ... a scout, I could be any of that," Flemings said Monday during a pre-draft media availability. "I've watched so much basketball at this point, I think I know a lot about the game, so yeah, I could definitely be that, for sure."

He also corrected a reporter on CJ McCollum's alma mater: the Hawks veteran went to Lehigh, not Lafayette.

Flemings is expected to be a high first-round pick on Tuesday; Adam Finkelstein's most recent mock draft has him going No. 8 to the Atlanta Hawks. But when he takes the stage to shake Adam Silver's hand at Barclays Center, it will not be his first draft. Instead, he and his teammates used to spend road trips picking a player at each position and squabbling about who was the best fake GM.

"They're arguing over whose mythical NBA team that they just drafted was going to win and why," Cowgill said. "He's always been a nerd in that space."

Flemings is the exact type of nerd that you want your point guard to be. For an explosive downhill driver, he is incredibly cerebral, a master of manipulating defenders and conjuring clean looks for his teammates. "Would not shock me if his favorite player is Tyrese Haliburton," J. Kyle Mann wrote in The Ringer's draft guide.

Indeed, Flemings is a big fan, dating back to Haliburton's days with the Sacramento Kings. Flemings argued that, for all the love Haliburton got when he led the Indiana Pacers to the 2025 Finals, he was still underrated, as the Pacers were "a completely different team" without him on the court. In terms of inspiration, Flemings pointed not to Haliburton's fancy passing and clutch shotmaking, but to his command and decision-making.

"He controls the whole pace of the game," Flemings said. "Everything. It's almost like LeBron when he plays. Obviously, they're different players, but how LeBron controls the whole court when he's on, it's just like Tyrese Haliburton. For him, having such a high usage rate and assists, his turnovers are always down. He's a special player, for sure."

Flemings said he's not sure if vision like that can be taught. It may have helped, though, that he was smaller than his peers in middle school. "I kind of had to work in different ways and find out how to get my shot off or get certain angles," he said. Sampson started recruiting Flemings as a sophomore in high school, at which point he was already freezing help-side defenders by looking in a certain direction.

"He would hold 'em with his eyes and then he would throw a laser to the corner for a 3, or hold the corner with his eyes and then all of a sudden quick-first-step his way to the rim," Sampson said. "He was just having his wicked way with 'em."

Some of Flemings' teammates at Brennan were the same kids from his pretend draft leagues in elementary school. "It's all his best friends," Sampson said, friends who got "so frustrated and annoyed with him because they knew what he was doing and they still couldn't stop it."

Flemings knows how exhilarating it is to blow by a defender, soar through the air and throw down a nasty dunk. In his estimation, it's slightly less exhilarating than out-thinking his opponents.

"Knowing that I controlled that whole play and I really affected that, that's the best feeling in the game," Flemings said. "I like scoring points, but, for me, when I'm looking someone off and I'm diming someone up in a crazy way, that's definitely where I find most of my enjoyment."

Toronto Raptors guard Jamal Shead said Flemings is "wired weird" and the way his brain works is "interesting." These were compliments. Shead was Houston's point guard when he got in touch with Flemings, having heard from Sampson and his brother about the kid in San Antonio who changed speeds and could really defend. "We've talked a lot over the years, not even just about basketball," Shead said. One thing that became obvious: "He just wants to win at everything."

As a rule, elite athletes are some of the world's most competitive people. Flemings, however, is an outlier among outliers. When the Cougars were recruiting him, they had to be careful when discussing the parts of his game they wanted to develop.

"You want to appeal to his competitiveness without triggering his stubbornness," Sampson said. "And if you get too far down the road with some of that stuff, he starts thinking you're his opponent and I'm going to prove to you that isn't my problem."

Sampson described Flemings as "a perceptive, insanely intelligent human being" who is "never not paying attention." He would make what he thought were throwaway comments during conversations, he said, only for Flemings to reference them months later. 

"It was an absolute mental assault and challenge to recruit him for three years in order to get him, and then just an absolute treasure to coach him for a year," Sampson said.

Cowgill warned Sampson about another fine line the Cougars would have to tread: If you're trying to teach fundamentals, you must make it engaging enough that Flemings will be locked in, but you can't make it too competitive "because he will forsake any technique or skill in an effort to win," Sampson said. At Brennan, Cowgill turned the scoreboard off at practice whenever he needed the team to focus on execution.

Sampson proudly called Flemings' lone season at Houston, during which he averaged 16.1 points, 5.2 assists and 4.1 rebounds in 31.7 minutes per game, "the greatest freshman season in the history of our school." He described him as authentic, sincere and comfortable in his own skin, saying that there is "a gravitational pull to him in whatever room he's in." He also said Flemings "might be one of the worst pre-practice players we've ever had. Because we're not competing yet." 

If the Cougars' coaches wanted to raise the intensity level at practice, all they had to do was "piss him off and go right to competition," Sampson said. When going at it with Kordelius Jefferson, Emanuel Sharp and Mercy Miller, there were "borderline fights at practice because we all want to win so bad," Flemings said. And Cowgill was completely correct about the danger of keeping score.

"If you were working on the fundamentals of blocking out, ehhh," Sampson said. "But then if it becomes the first to five defensive rebounds, guess what he's not going to do? He ain't blocking out anybody, he's just going to try to go get the ball."

Sampson has described Flemings as an "awesome, wonderful asshole." Asked to elaborate, he said that Flemings is "so maniacal about whatever he's doing that he really doesn't care if he's got to push you or drag you." On the court, anyway.

"I know a lot of kids that are uber-competitive and uber-intense on the court that are complete jerk-offs off the court," Cowgill said. "They can't turn that aspect off, they get in trouble in the hallways. Kingston's exactly the opposite: super intense on the court, super competitive on the court, but off the court he's so chill. I had a lot of teachers at Brennan give me the 'I had no idea Kingston even played basketball.' He's just such a mellow kid off the court. So engaging. Just sits there. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir." 

As intense as he is, Flemings is also a "giver," Cowgill said, and from a young age understood the importance of facilitating offense for others and putting his teammates in the right spots. From time to time, Cowgill likes to "solo artist the good kids," he said, putting one of the best players on a team with the end-of-the-bench guys and stacking the other team with talent. Typically, the solo artist will ratchet up his aggressiveness and take virtually every shot. Not Flemings. 

"Kingston is 100% the only kid that I've had that, in that space, is actually looking at everybody on his team and seeing what strength that kid has and how he can use that kid to help him be successful," Cowgill said. "Like, oh, this guy, he can be a good screener, I can put him here. Or this guy's a good shooter from the corner, I'm going to put him in the corner here."

When Sampson first watched Flemings at Brennan, he noted that his burst and athleticism were unusual for his age. Even more unusual, though, was the way he carried himself, the way he interacted with his teammates. "It was all of the intangibles that he had that just totally blew your socks off," Sampson said. He was a natural leader, but also a trash-talker and a "gladiator of a competitor." Years later, after all the time they've spent together, Sampson still chooses his words carefully around Flemings, knowing they might be thrown back in his face one day. And he's fine with that.

"He is not some robot that was shipped away to a prep school to be a basketball cyborg from the moment he was 10 years old," Sampson. "He's a beautifully well-rounded, articulate, engaging young man that's got an awesome view on a multitude of subjects. It just happens to be packaged inside a keg of dynamite."

Leading up to the pre-draft process, Cowgill's biggest concern was that, if Flemings worked with new people, they'd try to reconstruct his jump shot "to make it look like everybody else's." Flemings' mechanics are a bit unorthodox, but drastic changes may erode his confidence.

Fortunately, Flemings and his family decided he'd prep for the draft locally, with the same people he'd been around for years. Skills trainer Devon Agusi worked with him on live-ball reads. Cowgill worked with him on his shooting. Ian Ward, an assistant coach at Brennan, broke down film. Devin Gibson, who coached him with SA Future (the AAU team that Flemings' father, Dee, co-founded with Cowgill), Brennan trainer Ashlee Anderjeski and strength and conditioning coach Rae Bautista are also in his circle.

This isn't to say that Flemings didn't need to make any tweaks. Cowgill worked with him on widening his base and making his release faster and more fluid. "But we're talking, like, cutting diamonds," Cowgill said. Flemings wasn't a high-volume 3-point shooter in college, but he shot 38.7% from deep -- 45.5% on catch-and-shoot attempts, per Synergy Sports -- and 84.5% from the free throw line.

Tyrese Maxey, one of Flemings' favorite players, shot just 29.2% from 3 in college on similar volume and 30.1% in his rookie season. Flemings cited him as a model of continual improvement. Compared to the end of his season in Houston, he said, he already feels "much more comfortable" on both pull-up and spot-up 3s.

"Maybe this year I won't be a 40% shooter off the dribble or something like that," Flemings said. "But as I continue to work, I continue to get better and more comfortable with it, eventually I will be."

Flemings has been working on his floater, too, after attempting only eight such shots in college, per Synergy. Sampson said he tried to get Flemings to add it to his repertoire at Houston, but "eventually I just dropped it," as Flemings was far more confident in his middy "and then if he gets past middy range, he's so explosive at the rim." Flemings' position was that spending time on it in-season was counterproductive. He wanted to focus on the shots he'd actually take in games.

He's now shooting floaters the way he shot them when he was young. When he got taller and stronger, the shot "started feeling weird to him, so he kind of changed how he shot it, started holding it by his head and pushing it," Cowgill said. Going into workouts with teams, Cowgill encouraged him to just find one floater, however he could get to it. Immediately following one workout, he sent Cowgill a text: He got to three floaters and made two of them.

"He was really excited," Cowgill said.

One of the things Flemings has learned from Shead: Knowing what you hang your hat on. "He came in as a second-rounder," Flemings said. "They can't not play him because of his competitiveness, the way he defends, the way he's a point guard. If you want to win, you're going to play him." From Day 1 in the NBA, Flemings said, he knows he'll be able to generate paint touches, take care of the ball, find open teammates and defend with toughness. He also said that he will be ready to adapt to whatever his team needs.

As stubborn as he can be, Flemings would never have chosen Houston if he didn't want to be challenged. After a three-game losing streak in February, he met with coach Kelvin Sampson for a film session in which the 70-year-old delivered a blunt message: "Stop trying to be Allen Iverson, be Kingston Flemings." Early on, Flemings was not the opponent's top priority, given that the Cougars were coming off a run to the NCAA championship game and had returned their starting backcourt of Milos Uzan and Sharp. That started to change after Flemings dropped 42 points on Texas Tech.

If teams were going to blitz him, deny him and help in the gaps, all Flemings had to do was what he'd done his whole life: take what the defense was giving him. In the next game, against Colorado, Flemings took only five shots in 30 minutes, but dished eight assists. The Cougars won by 40, the start of a five-game winning streak. 

"Shit, the happiest guy in the room was him," Sampson said. "The magic of him is he recognized that ASAP. He said, 'Oh, man, I don't have to go be Superman every night now.'"

Sampson has no doubt that Flemings will continue to listen to what the game tells him. If that means taking more pull-up 3s and floaters, then that's what he'll do. To those who have been around him, his competitive spirit and basketball brain are far more important than his shot distribution in college.

"If he shot more pull-up 3s, the narrative would be, 'Yeah, but sometimes he lets defenses off the hook because, instead of getting by people with his burst, he settles for pull-up jumpers,'" Sampson said. "We get to this point in the draft and everybody's looking for a bunion on Miss America's foot. But the reality is when it's time for him to be an NBA player, he'll be an NBA player. A year ago, everybody thought, well, he's too much of a high school player, he's not going to be able to translate that to the Big 12. OK!"

With the ball in his hands, the appeal of Flemings is that he marries speed and power with patience and poise. This is more or less how he lives his life, too. Flemings knows that, at 19, he's nowhere near a finished product, and he understands he'll have to prove himself again at the next level. He'll attack that challenge as relentlessly as he attacks the rim.

"I'm never going to halfway do anything," Flemings said.