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On Monday evening, the Dallas Mavericks shook up the NBA landscape by landing the number one overall pick in the upcoming draft. The consensus top prospect this year is Duke star Cooper Flagg, although if anyone were to go against the grain, it would probably be Nico Harrison.
Still, it was a rare moment of elation for Mavericks fans that have suffered through arguably the most inconcontempant three month stretch in recent professional sports history, beginning with the Luka Doncic trade to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Recently, Mavericks assistant general manager Matt Riccardi got real on why he believes the basketball gods rewarded the team for not tanking down the stretch of their season.
“There have been ups and downs since the trade,” he said, per Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports (via The Stein Line). “To go from a Finals run to the lottery, none of us expected that. [But] we played the right way down the stretch and didn't tank.”
Indeed, the two teams who finished with the worst records in the league this year–the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards–finished with the fifth and sixth picks in this year's draft despite clear efforts down the stretch of the season to perform below their capacity.
A stunning turn for the Mavericks
The Mavericks have quickly gone from the league's biggest punchline to a suddenly intriguing team in the loaded Western Conference, especially if Kyrie Irving is able to return from his ACL injury at some point during next year's regular season.
Flagg will have an opportunity to learn from one of the all-time greats in Mavericks big man Anthony Davis, and the move also gives Dallas a building block for years to come, long after Davis and Irving are no longer with the team.
Overall, it was a moment of joy that Mavericks fans deserved after their three-month long nightmare in the wake of the Doncic deal, even if Harrison and the ownership's incompetence was ultimately rewarded.
