CHICAGO (AP/WGN) — Late last month, the Dallas Mavericks and Chicago Bulls squared off in a seemingly inconsequential coin-flip, with little attention paid to a small tiebreaking matter between two teams that didn’t even reach the first round of the NBA playoffs.
As it turned out, that coin carried a lot of weight.
The Mavericks won the flip, securing a minimal 0.1% advantage over the Bulls in the NBA Draft Lottery, held Monday night at McCormick Place. The teams finished with identical 39-43 records during this past regular season and were subsequently eliminated in the play-in round, thus necessitating the tiebreaking coin-flip for lottery odds.
Neither had good odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick in next month’s NBA Draft when team executives and others gathered for the lottery Monday night. The Mavs stood at just 1.8%, the Bulls at 1.7%.
Well, after the ping-pong balls bounced to determine everybody’s fate, the Mavs had bucked the odds and stunningly came out with the No. 1 pick. The Bulls? They finished right where the odds predicted, with the No. 12 pick in the first round.
It didn’t take a math expert to realize that had the coin-flip between the teams gone the other way last month, the Bulls would’ve been the team in fortune’s favor, not the Mavs.
It all means that Cooper Flagg, one of the best draft prospects in years who led Duke to the Final Four in his lone college season, is likely headed to Dallas to begin his NBA career, rather than to Chicago.
“I didn’t try to think about it too much,” Flagg said on the broadcast of the lottery about what it’ll likely mean for his immediate future. “It was out of my control.”
The NBA Draft is June 25 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Bulls land at No. 12
The Bulls got a draft position exactly commensurate with their lottery odds going into Monday, which wouldn’t hurt so much if not for the fateful coin-flip and the Mavs’ subsequent lottery luck.
Had the ping-pong balls bounced exactly according to the odds for every team, the Bulls would’ve picked 12th. They didn’t bounce that way, of course, but the Bulls — who had an 8% chance of getting a top-four pick going into the lottery — still wound up at No. 12.
The Bulls had the No. 11 pick last year, which they used to select Chicagoland native Matas Buzelis.
The Bulls have won the draft lottery twice before, in 1999 when they drafted Elton Brand at No. 1 and again in 2008 when they took hometown legend Derrick Rose with the top pick.
Replacing Luka?
Meanwhile, it was a fortuitous turn of events Monday for the Mavs, who will now likely select Flagg to become their new face of the franchise after a stunning in-season trade that sent former face-of-the-franchise Luka Dončić — who led Dallas to the NBA Finals just a year ago — to the Los Angeles Lakers.
In less than a calendar year, the Mavs went from playing in the NBA Finals, to trading away one of the best players in franchise history, to missing the playoffs, to landing the right to draft a player many think will quickly become a superstar.
“I am so happy for Mavericks fans,” Mavs CEO Rick Welts said, clutching the envelope with the No. 1 emblazoned on it. “I only got to Dallas (on) Jan. 1 this year. (On) Feb. 1, we broke the internet (with the Dončić trade).
“I am just amazed at the depth of emotion and connection that the fanbase has with this team. And what happened (Monday), I can’t imagine a better day for Mavs fans. It’s going to really be something special. I can’t wait to get back to Dallas.”
A screaming-for-joy Mark Cuban called new Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont — who was at his child’s track meet — with the happy news. Cuban was so excited that Dumont evidently couldn’t even make out the words he was saying. He just figured they were good ones.
Flagg averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists while leading Duke to the Final Four in his lone college season. He shot 48% from the field, 39% from 3-point range and 84% from the foul line, and was named The Associated Press’ national player of the year.
And Flagg has had success against NBA players already. Last summer, when the U.S. Olympic team was holding its training camp in Las Vegas in advance of the Paris Games — where the Americans won gold yet again — Flagg was part of the select team brought in for scrimmages against the Olympians.
Flagg, who was 17 years old at the time, more than held his own in those workouts.
“I don’t know who we’re going to take, but should we take him, I think his resume is pretty strong,” Welts said. “Every time he’s put in a situation that everyone wondered if he could succeed, he’s succeeded and then some.”
Spurs go second
San Antonio, with back-to-back rookies of the year in Victor Wembanyama — the prize of the 2023 lottery — and Stephon Castle, will pick second. Philadelphia will pick third, and Charlotte will pick fourth.
“When you jump into the top four again, you put yourself as an organization in a place to make a really big acquisition with a really good player,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “And that’s what we’re going to look forward to doing.”
Utah will pick fifth, Washington sixth, New Orleans seventh, Brooklyn eighth, Toronto ninth, Houston 10th, Portland 11th, Chicago 12th, Atlanta 13th and San Antonio (again) 14th.
There were 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick. Utah, Washington and Charlotte had the best odds at 14% each. The Jazz and Wizards got jumped, with San Antonio and Philadelphia moving into the top four.
“This draft is really strong at the top, especially in the top three, and we’re very excited,” 76ers basketball operations president Daryl Morey said.
For the Jazz, it was the extension of a trend they didn’t want to see continue — in the current lottery format, the team that finished the season with the worst record hasn’t yet won. Utah was a league-worst 17-65 this season and got the fifth pick, its worst possible lottery outcome.
There were 14 lottery spots but only 13 teams with a chance to win the No. 1 pick because Atlanta’s odds conveyed to San Antonio, essentially meaning the Spurs were in the lottery twice — with a 6% chance of winning on their own and a 0.7% chance to win with the Hawks’ combinations of ping-pong balls.
This system has been in place since 2019, the latest effort to discourage tanking — the practice where teams aren’t overly interested in winning regular-season games with hopes instead of bettering their chances of winning the No. 1 draft pick.
The teams with the three worst records all have the same chance — 14% — of winning the No. 1 pick, and odds for the remaining lottery teams are gradually reduced from there.
Rest of draft order
The lottery only sets the order for the first 14 picks in the draft. The rest of the first-round order, for now: Oklahoma City at No. 15, Orlando No. 16, Minnesota No. 17, Washington No. 18, Brooklyn No. 19 and Miami No. 20.
From there, the final 10 picks in the first round are owned by Utah (21), Atlanta (22), Indiana (23), Oklahoma City (24), Orlando (25), Brooklyn (26 and 27), Boston (28), Phoenix (29) and the Los Angeles Clippers (30).