The Dallas Mavericks are one week removed from having been eliminated from playoff contention, as they have roughly three weeks till any important event takes place for the franchise with the NBA Draft Lottery coming on May 12. Dallas didn’t forecast the draft lottery to bear any importance heading into this season, coming off the heels of an NBA Finals appearance, but after injuries and the Luka Doncic trade plummeted Dallas’ season, the Mavericks will be praying for ping pong balls to go their way instead of playing playoff basketball in May.
The Mavericks caught a slight string of luck recently, as they were announced to have won a tiebreaker with the Chicago Bulls for the 11th-best lottery odds instead of the 12th, as the two teams both finished the season with equal records. However, Dallas’ odds at the No.1 pick only go up a mere 0.1 percent after having won this tiebreaker.
This draft class could arguably be one of the best ones in recent memory when it’s all said and done, so it’s likely the Mavericks will be able to find some solid talent to help their squad toward the back-half of the lottery. The draft is still a crapshoot to a certain extent, though, and the worse Dallas’ pick is, the worse of an opportunity they have to add a day-one impact player.
Dylan Harper, Jeremiah Fears, Egor Demin, and Liam McNeeley are just a few names Mavericks fans can start thinking of in terms of being guards or wings in this class that can come in and help from a shot creation perspective, especially with Kyrie Irving out of the lineup for a decent chunk of next season. None of those players will go first overall, though, and the consensus No. 1 pick in this draft amongst most people who know anything about basketball will be Duke prospect Cooper Flagg, who’d be the only player that could reconcile Dallas’ decision to trade Doncic.
The Mavericks only have a 1.8 percent chance at landing Flagg and the No. 1 pick, which are odds they could have improved had they taken a different course of action instead of bringing all their big men back to make a run at the playoffs. However, while the Mavericks have never moved up in the lottery in franchise history, perhaps this could be the year they finally get some astounding luck and move up all the way to the first slot in the draft.
This is obviously a pipe-dream scenario, but this would be the only way the Mavericks could invigorate the same hope with their franchise that Doncic once brought. Generational players only come around so often in the NBA, and Doncic has proven to be one of those one-of-one talents, even though Nico Harrison punted on him before he could even reach his prime.
Flagg is an entirely different player from Doncic, as he’s a 6-foot-10 two-way wing with subtle shades of Kawhi Leonard and Anthony Davis, but he’s one of the rare prospects that projects as a generational talent much like Doncic once did. Obviously, Harrison wouldn’t be spared just because Dallas were to theoretically get extremely lucky and draft Flagg, but it would certainly be a way the universe could give the Mavericks’ fanbase hope for years to come after it was wrongfully stripped from them.
Who knows what sort of chaos would ensue if Dallas got the No.1 pick and the ability to draft Flagg, but even Harrison probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to trade the pick in that instance, as Flagg embodies the defensive type of superstar Harrison would want on this roster. It’s not the end-all-be-all if Dallas doesn’t get the No. 1 pick this year, but it’s certainly the only fathomable way the franchise could even attempt to reconcile the disaster the Doncic trade has become.
