ByJustin Birnbaum
ByJustin Birnbaum,
Forbes Staff.
In
2023, before Cooper Flagg was the top player in college basketball and the presumptive No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA Draft, New Balance Chief Marketing Officer Chris Davis issued an audacious challenge to one of his top lieutenants. “Go get this guy,” Naveen Lokesh, who leads the brand’s basketball and football divisions, recalls being told, as his boss dropped a recent issue of SLAM magazine with Duke’s prized freshman on the cover onto his desk.
