With the potential addition of Cooper Flagg, this roster needs to be flipped on its head
The Dallas Mavericks miraculously won the NBA Draft Lottery on Monday evening, meaning that they will have the chance to reverse the course of the franchise on June 25th. Consensus number one overall prospect Cooper Flagg, a forward out of Duke, is going to be the number one overall pick that night, per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. That will be a night of celebration in this city. But from there, the work is only just beginning.
Quick fixes
When you go down the roster, you’ll see a bunch of wings and centers, and very few guys who can dribble a basketball. While Flagg is serviceable as a playmaker, as he averaged over four assists per game at Duke, he’s not someone who is going to be a primary ballhandler, at least not right away. The Mavs will still need to find at least a couple guards this summer to really balance the roster out.
One way the Mavericks can do that is by liquidating some of the front court assets they have amassed. Winning the lottery will allow them to draft Cooper Flagg, who is going to play both small and power forward early on. Does that make PJ Washington expendable? We’ve already seen reporting that Daniel Gafford would like to be paid starter money, and both are due for extensions this summer. It wouldn’t be a shock if one or both were moved to ease the logjam in the front court.
The future elephant in the room
The Mavericks were self-admittedly built to compete in a three-year window. However, that build didn’t include stinking so bad that you fell ass-backwards into the number one overall pick. With that now being the team’s reality, the pressure on this organization is only going to increase from here. This fanbase is not going to blindly trust the front office anymore. Every year that is wasted now is one more level of pressure on ownership to make sweeping changes. There is no time to waste when it comes to trying to build a contender.
With that in mind, it’s time to transition into a bigger, and much more interesting conversation. How do you approach the Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis duo moving forward? These are two guys who are bonafide stars in this league. However, they are 33 and 32 years old, respectively. Cooper Flagg isn’t turning 19 until December. You can try the whole two timelines bit, as many teams have tried to do before, but that’s not a strategy that works very often. This organization must pick a path and be totally committed to it.
The cleanest way to do this is to blow it all up. That includes firing GM Nico Harrison and his cabinet, who should still not be trusted to screw all of this up, and trading both Davis and Irving for a pile of assets and just resetting this organization. Furthermore, it’d be ideal to bring in a young guard who can pair with Flagg for at least his first contract, and hopefully beyond. The Mavs already have an exciting front court with two young Dukies in Flagg and Dereck Lively. That level of sustainability is what Dallas should be aiming for.
Utilize the gift you have received
The Mavericks have to do everything through the prism of building a championship roster around Cooper Flagg. The Dallas organization has to operate on a 20-year window, just like when they landed a young, generational talent in Luka Doncic back in 2018. It is organizational malpractice to operate on the same three-year timeline that Nico Harrison envisioned even just a week ago.
The current iteration of the Mavericks died on May 12th. Good riddance to them, as that was the worst three and a half months you could imagine in your basketball life. It’s time to start over, and the Dallas Mavericks organization was gifted one hell of a building block. But in order to get to the goal of winning a championship with Cooper Flagg, they’ve got to start the build around him. Here’s to hoping they do so now.