UNC and Duke have taken diverging approaches to recruiting in an evolving college basketball landscape, a difference that led Cooper Flagg to Durham, and the Blue Devils to a blowout win over the Tar Heels.

Dave O’Brien was a high schooler in Keene, N.H., during the beginnings of the Celtics’ 1980s heyday, so he is well aware it’s borderline blasphemous to compare any young basketball player to Larry Bird — and perhaps the word borderline isn’t even necessary.