The goal has been announced, the architectural plans are drawn, and the closer on what will be more than a $1.5 billion project is an 18-year-old from Maine who didn’t graduate from college.
Cooper Flagg, it’s on Y-O-U to get the Dallas Mavericks close to an NBA title, and a new arena.
The timeline is six years.
On Wednesday night, NBA commissioner Adam Silver made official what was a formality for the last month plus when he announced that the Dallas Mavericks selected Duke forward Cooper Flagg with the first pick in the 2025 NBA draft.
“Fortune favors the bold,” Mavs GM Nico Harrison told the local media at the team’s practice facility after the first round of the draft ended. “So exciting things fell our way.”
Fortune also favors the really, really, extremely, incredibly lucky.
“It’s a dream come true to be honest,” Flagg told ESPN after the pick.
Somewhere in first class, Mavs owner Patrick Dumont and team president Rick Welts said the same thing.
It’s surreal that not only did the Mavericks win the lottery, but that Harrison did not trade Flagg to the L.A. Lakers for Dorian-Finney Smith, Alex Len and an 18-game season ticket plan.
Harrison said Flagg is “a generational talent.”
Hmmm .... generational talent ... if memory serves, he had one of those a few months ago on his roster.
“Guys are excited to play with him,” Harrison said. “It’s win now, and it’s win in the future. Eventually it’s going to be Cooper’s team, we don’t know when that will happen.”
Flagg is a Mav, and he will wear No. 32, just like former Maverick great, fellow Duke alum, Christian Laettner. The Flagg jerseys are available now (pretty sure the Laettner ones sold out). In the immediate hour or so after the pick was announced, the line outside of the Mavs team store at the American Airlines Center was “healthy.”
The short term needs for Flagg is to get used to the NBA, its game, the schedule, and the life. The long term needs for Flagg are, and these are in no particular order, help to secure the funding for a new arena/casino, be as good as Luka Doncic, save the GM from himself.
This starts with Flagg by proving he is the “generational talent” that NBA Draft analysts and observers have called him for the past year. Look up the history of No. 1 overall picks, and it’s a sobering list.
After you put down the list, watch Flagg at Duke. It’s easy to see why scouts and coaches want him to marry their daughter. Their niece. And for sure their wife.
For Mavericks fans to forget Doncic, but not forgive the specifics of the trade that helped make this new arrival possible, Flagg has to be as good as the Slovenian Laker.
For Nike Niko, that’s the deal to save the deal.
If Flagg develops into the human triple double who leads the team to the Western Conference Finals and NBA Finals in his first six years, the trade can be called not a horrible deal.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Landing Flagg is not a result of shrewd, Sam Presti-like moves. Flagg’s arrival is the result of the Mavs missing the playoffs one year after reaching the NBA Finals combined with the bounces of a few ping pong balls.
However Flagg got here, if he’s good he will save Harrison from a potentially uncomfortable chat with Dumont.
If Flagg is as good as advertised/expected/hoped, he will effectively serve as the closer on the Mavs’ campaign pitch to Dallas voters to build a new arena in the city, by 2031. The plans are drawn. There are a few potential sites close to downtown the team is currently surveying.
When the Mavs hired Welts his main homework assignment is a new arena. A new arena that will “require” public funding. A new arena that may include hotel space, as well as designated areas for a casino.
Asking voters for more money to fund a new arena that it doesn’t need is tricky these days; from Alexandria, Va. to Kansas City to Chicago, voters across the country are voting “HELL NO” to these proposals more than ever before.
Without Flagg, asking angry fans for more money may have sent Welts back into another round of retirement.
If Flagg is good, and the Mavs win, Welts’ job becomes exponentially easier. Sports fans historically don’t forget, but they move on and accept unlike any other consumer alive.
This time one year ago, a fan of the Dallas Mavericks could not have envisioned this is where they would all be in the summer of 2025.
Doncic is a Laker. Flagg is a Mav.
All he has to do is be Luka’s eventual equal, and get a new arena built.