CHICAGO (AP) — The ping-pong balls have spoken: Cooper Flagg might be headed to Dallas to start his NBA career.
And a fan base that lost Luka Doncic this season might have a new star to cheer for.
The Mavericks won the NBA draft lottery on Monday night, giving them the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft — and the first chance to take Flagg, the freshman who led Duke to the Final Four in his lone college season and the consensus player of the year.
A screaming-for-joy Mark Cuban called new Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont — who was at his child’s track meet — with the happy news, and just like that, there’s something to root for in Dallas again after a tumultuous few months where Doncic got traded and the Mavs missed the playoffs. Cuban was so excited that Dumont evidently couldn’t even make out the words he was saying. He just figured they were good ones.
“I am so happy for Mavericks fans,” Dallas CEO Rick Welts said, clutching the envelope with the No. 1 emblazoned on it. “I only got to Dallas January 1st this year. February 1st, we broke the internet. I am just amazed at the depth of emotion and connection that the fan base has with this team. And what happened today, I can’t imagine a better day for Mavs fans. It’s going to really be something special. I can’t wait to get back to Dallas.”
Dallas bucked huge odds to get it done, with only a 1.8% chance — “a 1.8% chance? Are you kidding me?” Welts said — to win the lottery coming into Monday. A Mavs team that went to the NBA Finals last season, then scorned its fans by trading away Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, left the lottery with the biggest prize.
“I didn’t try to think about it too much,” Flagg said on the broadcast of the lottery about what it’ll likely mean for his immediate future. “It was out of my control.”
If Miami had lost in the play-in tournament, the Heat would have had the odds that the Mavericks ended up having — so if the ping-pong balls bounced the same way, they would have had the No. 1 pick.
“I mean come on man,” Heat forward Kevin Love posted on social media when the lottery winner was announced, presumably reacting to seeing a No. 1 pick that could have been Miami’s go elsewhere.
Instead, it was Dallas’ night. And another Texas team nearly stole the show.
San Antonio, with back-to-back rookies of the year in Victor Wembanyama — the prize of the 2023 lottery — and Stephon Castle, will pick second. Philadelphia will pick third, and Charlotte will pick fourth.
“When you jump into the top four again, you put yourself as an organization in a place to make a really big acquisition with a really good player,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “And that’s what we’re going to look forward to doing.”
Flagg averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists while leading Duke to the Final Four in his lone college season. He shot 48% from the field, 39% from 3-point range, 84% from the foul line and was The Associated Press’ national player of the year.
And he’s had success against NBA players already. Last summer, when the U.S. Olympic team was holding its training camp in Las Vegas in advance of the Paris Games — where the Americans won gold yet again — Flagg was part of the select team brought in for scrimmages against the Olympians.
Flagg, who was 17 years old at the time, more than held his own in those workouts.
“I don’t know who we’re going to take, but should we take him, I think his resume is pretty strong,” Welts said. “Every time he’s put in a situation that everyone wondered if he could succeed, he’s succeeded and then some.”
The other lottery results
Utah will pick fifth, Washington sixth, New Orleans seventh, Brooklyn eighth, Toronto ninth, Houston 10th, Portland 11th, Chicago 12th, Atlanta 13th and San Antonio 14th.
There were 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick. Utah, Washington and Charlotte had the best odds at 14% each. The Jazz and Wizards got jumped, with San Antonio and Philadelphia moving into the top four.
“This draft is really strong at the top, especially in the top three and we’re very excited,” 76ers basketball operations president Daryl Morey said.
For the Jazz, it was the extension of a trend they didn’t want to see continue — in this format, the team that finished the season with the worst record hasn’t won the lottery. Utah was a league-worst 17-65 this season and got the fifth pick, its worst possible lottery outcome.
There were 14 lottery spots but only 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick because Atlanta’s odds conveyed to San Antonio, essentially meaning the Spurs were in the lottery twice — with a 6% chance of winning on their own, and a 0.7% chance to win with the Hawks’ combinations of ping-pong balls.
This system has been in place since 2019, the latest effort to discourage tanking — the practice where teams aren’t overly interested in winning regular-season games with hopes instead of bettering their chances of winning the No. 1 draft pick.
The teams with the three worst records all have the same chance — 14% — of winning the No. 1 pick, and odds for the remaining lottery teams are gradually reduced from there.
The rest of the draft order
The lottery only sets the order for the first 14 picks in the draft. The rest of the first-round order, for now: Oklahoma City at No. 15, Orlando No. 16, Minnesota No. 17, Washington No. 18, Brooklyn No. 19 and Miami No. 20.
From there, the final 10 picks in the first round are owned by Utah (21), Atlanta (22), Indiana (23), Oklahoma City (24), Orlando (25), Brooklyn (26 and 27), Boston (28), Phoenix (29) and the Los Angeles Clippers (30).
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AP Sports Writer Andrew Seligman contributed to this report.
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