Dallas Mavericks select Duke’s Cooper Flagg with top pick in 2025 NBA Draft
The Dallas Mavericks selected Cooper Flagg with the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft on Wednesday, a move that was expected after the team won the draft lottery and made the Maine native the second youngest No. 1 overall pick in NBA history behind LeBron James.
After he was selected, Flagg spoke with ESPN’s Monica McNutt about what his family and hometown meant for his journey to the top pick.
“I wouldn’t be here without these people right here and all my people back home in Maine, a lot of people up in the box up there, they’re here for me, and I wouldn’t be here without them. So it just means so much to see everyone here in support of me,” said Flagg.
Flagg’s mother, Kelly, talked about what she hoped to instill when she gave her son a basketball as a child.
“I just hoped that he loved the game as much as we always have. We’re just thrilled that he did love it, and he got to this moment, it’s incredible,” said the elder Flagg.
Mavs general manager Nico Harrison said it was Flagg’s off-court intangibles that stuck out when talking to past coaches and teammates.
“It was the collection, honestly, of everybody, everybody that I talked to, whether it was USA Basketball, his coach, the GM, the team, his past coaches, his teammates, again, everything they talk about with him are the intangibles. The intangibles that make up an excellent player. Nobody really talked about basketball with him. So I think that was the most impressive thing out of all that,” said Harrison.
The Mavs were not expected to be in the Flagg sweepstakes at the beginning of the season. After advancing to the NBA Finals the prior season, the Mavs were expected to contend for the NBA title once again.
How the Mavericks got the No. 1 draft pick
However, injuries and inconsistent play early in the season set the stage for one of the most shocking trades in league history when the Mavs shipped Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis and a 2029 first-round draft pick.
Doncic was a franchise cornerstone fresh off his first finals appearance and his fifth straight All-NBA selection when he was traded. Following his trade, the Mavs fell into the draft lottery after injuries to Davis and Kyrie Irving and won it despite having only a 1.8% chance.
After trading Doncic, Harrison talked about the importance of culture in winning an NBA title and talked about how Flagg fits the Mavs’ culture.
“I think the biggest thing is he’s a two-way player. When you watch him play, he plays hard, and when you have a guy that does that, it makes basketball plays. Again, when you talk about the stuff that people talk about him, they don’t talk about basketball with him. They talk about all the intangibles. 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,” said Harrison.
Cooper Flagg’s journey to the NBA
Flagg was a no-brainer selection at No. 1 as the consensus top player in the draft despite starting college a year earlier than most prospects after reclassifying to graduate from high school a year earlier in 2024.
In his lone season at Duke, Flagg averaged 19.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game on his way to winning Naismith College Player of the Year, ACC Player of the Year, while earning an All-American selection.
Flagg has been a phenom since his high school days at Nokomis Regional High School in Maine, where he was the first freshman in state history to win Maine Gatorade Player of the Year before transferring to Montverde Academy to finish his high school career.
Flagg is the prototypical NBA forward with two-way impact, whose elite defense and motor should allow him to impact NBA games immediately, not to mention an already varied scoring repertoire.
Harrison talked about how most No. 1 overall picks don’t get to play with multiple All-NBA players in their rookie season and how that would help his development.
“I think it’s actually awesome that if somebody gets to develop on their own time, whatever that is, and we have the support that we can allow him to develop,” said Harrison, “I think we have a team that will let him, whatever his time frame is, our team will allow him to to have that time frame. We won’t rush it, we won’t slow it. When he’s ready, he’s going to get everything that he can handle and more,” said Harrison.
Flagg’s selection ended a busy couple of days for the Mavs, who agreed to three-year contracts with Daniel Gafford and star point guard Kyrie Irving for approximately $54 million and $119 million, respectively.
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 7:11 PM.
