RALEIGH, N.C. — One college basketball player this season has attracted the notice of The Onion, which posted a brief gag last week announcing Cooper Flagg was taking two weeks off for a “family trip to Hilton Head.” The joke lands, although it’s hard to pin down exactly why.

Is it his youngish appearance? He did, after all, just turn 18. The constant presence of his family both at games and on telecasts? A wry commentary on how college athletes are more akin to employees than their fellow students?

Or is it a deep cut parodying Flagg’s evolution into a postmodern college star, one with his own agents and shoe deal who could very well tell Duke he was taking two weeks off and there would be nothing Duke could (or would) do about it. (Nor, for that matter, would Duke likely miss him if timed right, given the dismal state of the ACC.)

Whatever The Onion was trying to skewer, deliberately or inadvertently, it did. Primarily because Flagg has become a big enough target to skewer.

Every season has, at most, one main character who can capture the attention of the nation for more than the one month of the year college basketball claims a foremost spot in the collective sports consciousness. The days when Magic vs. Bird was a season-long debate culminating in the Final Four are over. These days, it takes a preternatural superstar like Flagg or Zion Williamson, or the relentless salesmanship of ESPN even in the face of evidence to the contrary — Ben Simmons comes to mind — to cross over before March.

It always ends up being a weird cocktail of stuff. Mind-boggling numbers aren’t enough; the ability to go viral matters more. Charisma is an ingredient, but it’s not everything. Being a top NBA draft prospect is practically mandatory; team success isn’t, although it helps. It’s hard to find one basket that fits Williamson, Simmons, Ja Morant, Zach Edey, Trae Young and Anthony Davis.

This season, if anyone filed that role, it was probably always going to be Flagg, who arrived amid unusual hype and the hosannas of every legitimate and wannabe NBA draft expert alike.

It took a while to get here, but here we are.

It took the hoops zeitgeist a while to settle on Flagg, because for all his productivity and versatility, his first few months at Duke weren’t easily captured in highlights or factoids. For all the time he spent playing on national TV, the focus of every broadcast, his greatness was more an abstraction than anything else, statistically elite without catching the eye despite leading his team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks.

And then it all seemed to happen at once, propelling Flagg into superstardom in the space of four days.

It started with that dunk against Pitt, collecting the ball nearly under his own basket, running past one defender at midcourt and leaping from outside the charge circle to throw it down over a hapless Guilermo Diaz Graham with his right hand, landing chest-to-chest with his would-be defender.

Teammate Sion James was openly aghast with his hands on his head and his mouth open, and the internet quickly echoed that reaction, collectively. It was the signature Cooper Flagg moment everyone had been waiting for. The clip flooded social media and YouTube, which almost seemed primed for him to finally do something viral.

The next time out, he broke the ACC freshman scoring record with 42 points against Notre Dame, surpassing Olivier Hanlan’s 41-point explosion at the ACC tournament in 2013. That’s less clippable, but it’s the kind of historic excellence that makes everyone who might have missed the dunk take notice.

Which is how we end up with ESPN promoting Flagg in the middle of a Kentucky game, as happened Tuesday night in an attempt to draw viewers to a Duke-Miami game that was little more than a late-night scrimmage. Flagg had 13 points against the Hurricanes, a quiet night by his standards.

John Calipari may not be there anymore, but it’s still Kentucky. The SEC may end up with two or three times as many NCAA bids as the ACC, but its best player — injured Auburn forward Johni Broome, Flagg’s stiffest competition for player of the year — doesn’t move the needle like that.

Duke has about a 1-in-3 chance to run the table in the ACC, and at this point the Blue Devils and Auburn have pulled away from the rest of the pack analytically, with only Houston even close. This all sets up for Flagg to be the singular star of the NCAA Tournament, and there’s no good reason why this Duke team can’t make it to the Final Four for his eventual anointing. And without even having to leave the state for the ACC tournament (Charlotte) or NCAA first and second rounds (Raleigh).

As a family vacation spot, San Antonio’s not Hilton Head, but it’s not bad, either.

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