DALLAS — The Mavericks, as expected, took forward Cooper Flagg with the first pick of the 2025 NBA draft Wednesday night.
“I’m feeling amazing. It’s a dream come true, to be honest,” Flagg said after his selection, with his family by his side. “I wouldn’t want to share it with anybody else.”
Dallas won the draft lottery despite only 1.8% odds, putting the Mavs in position to select Flagg, who was widely considered the top prospect in this draft class as soon as he reclassified to graduate high school and enter college a year earlier.
“It’s a generational talent, a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison said. “So just top to bottom, we’re excited.”
The 6-foot-8, 221-pound Flagg, who will not turn 19 until Dec. 21, arrived at Duke with immense expectations and lived up to the hype. He was a consensus All-American and won multiple national player of the year honors, including the Wooden Award and the Naismith Award, averaging 19.4 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.4 blocks and 1.4 steals while leading the Blue Devils to a 35-4 record and a Final Four appearance.
“I think the biggest thing is he’s a two-way player,” Harrison said. “When you watch him play, he plays hard. … When you have a player that’s that good and people talk about the intangibles — they don’t talk about basketball — then that’s a guy who’s going to add to your culture.”
Flagg’s arrival in Dallas comes less than five months after the Mavs’ shocking blockbuster trade of five-time All-NBA selection Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers, a deal that outraged the fan base of a franchise that advanced to the NBA Finals the previous season. The addition of Flagg is expected to mitigate the significant business concerns the franchise faced in the aftermath of the Doncic deal.
Flagg joins a Dallas team that has aspirations of contending immediately in the Western Conference on the heels of an injury-ravaged 39-43 campaign that ended with elimination in the final play-in game. He is expected to start in a loaded frontcourt rotation that features 10-time All-Star Anthony Davis, centers Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford and forwards P.J. Washington, Naji Marshall and Caleb Martin.
“I’m really excited. I think I keep saying I’m excited to be a sponge, to get down there and just learn, be surrounded by Hall of Fame-caliber guys and just to be able to learn from them,” Flagg said. “It’s going to be an incredible experience. I feel so blessed to be in the position I am.”
Harrison — who was again the target of “Fire Nico” chants at the watch party at American Airlines Center — said Flagg will immediately help the Mavs win and gradually grow into a franchise player.
“I think it’s win now. It’s also win in the future,” Harrison said. “We don’t know when, but eventually it’s going to be Cooper’s team. We don’t know when that transition will happen. So I think it’s win now and then set yourself up to win in the future as well.
“Even though he’s supposed to be graduating from high school this year, he’s going to be additive to what we’re doing. So he is going to help the timeline of winning now, but also he’s 18 years old, so he’s also going to help the timeline of winning in the future.”
