FLAGG COULD WIN A TITLE, NICO HARRISON IS SAFE — THE NBA NEVER WAS PROBED
It’s astonishing how 1.8-percent odds saved the lost-cause Dallas Mavericks, who will take a “bad-ass, cold-ass white boy” as he makes noise — not possible in Charlotte — with Davis, Irving, Thompson
The investigation never happened. No one from the FBI called the accounting firm, Ernst & Young LLP, and nobody contacted the 14 media members sitting in the lottery room during the drawing. What smacked of a shameful integrity breach — right down there with Patrick Ewing to the Knicks, LeBron James to the Cavaliers, Derrick Rose to the Bulls — officially will crash into supernatural space without a probe.
Cooper Flagg will be drafted first by the Dallas Mavericks, who traded Luka Doncic in February and needed extra police protection when fans wanted to burn the arena and bury a general manager in ashes. The draft lottery had to be the NBA’s way of saving a franchise in a devastated city, where diehards required straitjackets and sponsors were dropping drawers to the employers of Nico Harrison. He traded the beloved Luka to the Lakers. Why was divine intervention greeting him months later?
You don’t think Flagg’s mind, upon hearing of the trade, also veered in maddening directions? “We just all started going crazy,” he said Tuesday afternoon, recalling his Duke teammates on a night when they happened to beat North Carolina. “It was such a shock. Like, it was craziness.”
Little did he know the Mavericks would take advantage of 1.8-percent odds — they had 18 picks in 1,001 combinations — and position themselves to select him. Not only did the ping-pong-ball snafu save Harrison’s job and possibly his life, it rescued Flagg from ugly losing years in Charlotte, Utah or Washington. And if you’d like to fantasize a little, after watching Oklahoma City win the championship, Flagg will join a group that should have an outstanding season … and even make a run at a title?
He joins a team with Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson and Kyrie Irving, who is due to return in January from a torn ACL. They have six rings between them. The coach, Jason Kidd, has a ring. They are thrilled to have Flagg, the first white American drafted No. 1 overall since 1977. “We’ve developed a bad-ass, cold-ass white boy,” Kevin Garnett said on his podcast. The league had a chance to savor Flagg during Team USA’s pre-Olympic training camp. Everyone watched him dominate the college game as a 6-8, 220-pound wing who fell short of national glory. Dallas has a big man in Davis, a playmaker in Irving, a shooter in Thompson and a do-everything cog in Flagg. You don’t think OKC is noticing as Jalen Williams takes his first hit of alcohol? Houston, armed with Kevin Durant? Minnesota? Denver? Golden State? The Lakers, with new owner Mark Walter?
“I feel like I’m a broken record,” said Harrison, “but the team that we intended to put on the floor, which you guys saw for 2 1/2 quarters, that’s a championship-caliber team. And so you might not like it, but that’s the fact, it is.”
Championship-caliber, he said.
“It’s got to be the craziest reversal of fortune,” Mavericks CEO Rick Welts said. “It would match any in the league’s history.”
The craziest reversal, he said.
The league will spin heads this week. Durant has a chance to win a conference title or be unhappy again with his fifth team. The Celtics are crashing, sending Jrue Holiday to Portland and Kristaps Porzingis to Atlanta. Desmond Bane is in Memphis. Jordan Poole is in New Orleans. Lauri Markkanen could be traded. Giannis Antetokounmpo? Don’t be shocked. Even Denver president Josh Kroenke, who fired a champion coach in Michael Malone, suggested a wild scenario about dealing Nikola Jokic. “If the wrong person gets injured and very quickly you're into a scenario that I never want to have to contemplate, and that's trading (Jokic),” he said. “So we're very conscious of that pushing forward and providing the resources we can when the moment arrives.” Yikes.
We know this about Flagg: He’ll have minimal pressure in Dallas. He doesn’t have to carry a bad team and sell tickets. Forget about the big haul of succeeding Doncic. That’s why Davis is in town.
“I wouldn’t look at anything as pressure,” Flagg said. “I think me going into whatever situation I go into, I’m just going to try to be myself all the time and I’m going push myself to be better and better every single day and make the most out of every day. I’m not worried about living up to certain players’ expectations or things like that.”
Remember, Flagg is 18 and could have stayed in high school last season. He wanted to play at Duke. Now he’s major news. “I think a quote my mom likes to say a lot, if you’re the best player in the gym, then you need to find a new gym,” he said. “So for me, it was thinking about what I had left to do in high school, how much that would push me to become a better player. I felt it was time for me to kind of get to a new environment and push myself to higher levels.”
His coach at Duke, Jon Scheyer, is ecstatic. “It would be hard for me to imagine Cooper going through a season with a lot of losing. To me, it's a dream spot,” he told ESPN. “I really feel that way. Dallas has been lucky for many years. They've been able to watch Dirk (Nowitzki), Luka — so many winning teams. Now, you've got a guy in Cooper, who I think will carry that tradition forward.”
Flagg’s biggest fan is old enough to be his father. “I personally think that he wants to be great,” James said. “He had a hell of a year at Duke. A guy that can do so many different things out on the floor. Can play with the ball, can play without the ball. His jump shot is going to continue to get better. Super athletic, quick second jump.
“He has the benefit, unlike myself, he gets to join a team that's established, with Hall of Fame guys. Klay Thompson, Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, right off the bat. Hall of Fame coach, Jason Kidd. These guys, they can give him the whole blueprint while he continues to learn what his blueprint will be. And I think that's gonna be an incredible thing for him to have. That type of presence, that type of leadership, that type of just basketball IQ and knowledge around him every single day from those pieces. So, I think he's going to be amazing.”
Amazing is one way to describe Flagg suddenly hopscotching from, say, Charlotte to the lost-cause Mavericks. Weird stuff happens in this league. Marc Dieli was the Ernst & Young partner overseeing the draft process. Is he available to speak about it? He has been at the firm for 35 years.
No.
Never.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.