It has been a chaotic few months in Dallas basketball. In February, Nico Harrison engineered what some immediately dubbed the worst trade in NBA history, shipping 26-year-old franchise cornerstone Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick. That sent the Dallas Mavericks fanbase into a tailspin, with feelings of betrayal taking center stage.
Those same fans were offered a brief repreieve in April, when the Dallas Wings selected UConn star and NCAA champ Paige Bueckers with the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft. Nothing will paper over the void left by Dončić, but Bueckers is a generational talent in her own right and a tremendous ambassador for the community.
Now, in the doldrums of May, another No. 1 pick is on its way to Dallas. The Mavericks, in an utterly shocking development, won the NBA Draft Lottery and the rights to select Duke phenom Cooper Flagg. The Mavs held 1.8 percent odds to get the top pick.
Bueckers and Flagg arriving in Dallas in the same season, mere months after the Dončić debacle, is a truly absurd sequence of events. Bueckers went through the same emotions we all did, but she's excited for what the future holds in Dallas.
"I didn't think it was real at first," she told reporters. "But I believe God makes no mistakes."
Dallas Wings No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers on the Mavs winning the NBA draft lottery and potentially securing Cooper Flagg: “…I didn’t think [it] was real at first … but I believe God makes no mistakes.” pic.twitter.com/F9egQ0FjGV
— Myah Taylor (@t_myah) May 13, 2025
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Paige Bueckers' reaction to Cooper Flagg lottery will have Dallas basketball fans in heaven
What a dramatic shift in emotion for Dallas fans. It's impossible to overstate how bleak things felt after the Dončić trade. The Mavs sacrificed their future for an unequivocal downgrade and dealt away a beloved figure in the city. Not only was Dončić a ticket to championship contention, he was omnipresent in the community and a singular figure of acclaim in Dallas. To trade him in the dead of night, without any coherent reason, belt like a betrayal.
All of a sudden, the Mavs are in a great position with Flagg, who can help a contender next season and offer a bridge to the future beyond AD and Kyrie Irving. The Wings, meanwhile, reshuffled the deck in free agency and added a long-term pillar in Bueckers, who hails from a premier college program with a long track record of producing successful WNBA stars.
Flagg was the best freshman since Anthony Davis, funnily enough. He won the Wooden Award and led Duke to the Final Four as a young 18-year-old. Bueckers persevered through injury to emerge as a dominant, title-winning force at UConn. Both are former top recruits with elite pedigree. And both should perform immediately at a high level for their new teams.
Did the Mavs "deserve" this? Well, it doesn't matter. The fans absolutely do deserve this emotional facelift after such a dark period of tumult. Nico Harrison is less deserving, but Mavs fans will gladly embrace a newly bright future.