The most consequential numbers of Cooper Flagg's life
On how 14 ping-pong balls decided a person's future
Cooper Flagg sat in the front row, waiting to discover his fate.
For the first 18 years of his life, the six-foot-nine forward from Newport, Maine (population 3,100), made his own decisions. He chose to attend Nokomis Regional (enrollment around 600) for ninth grade, won the state championship, was named Maine’s player of the year, and averaged 20.5 points, 10 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals, and 3.7 blocks.
He then transferred to the sports-focused Montverde Academy in Florida (enrollment 1,200) and was the national player of the year, averaging 16.4 points, 7.5 rebounds, 3.8 assists, and 2.7 blocks.
Twenty years ago, Flagg could have chosen to skip college, but he wasn’t eligible for selection in the NBA Draft last year. The league mandates that players must turn 19 during that draft’s calendar year and be one year removed from finishing high school.
As the top-rated player in his class, he chose Duke (enrollment 6,500), where he was named player of the year and averaged 19.2 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 4.2 assists while leading them to a 35-4 record and a conference title. They lost in the Final Four, despite his 27 points, seven rebounds, four assists, three blocks, and two steals, after letting a six-point lead slip away in the game’s final minute.
Two weeks later, he declared for the draft. He is seen as the best offensive and best defensive prospect in his class. A potential superstar, face of the franchise type player.
Those will be the last choices he makes about his basketball career for a while. That’s the cost of admission. In 41 days at the NBA Draft, he will be the first of 59 players assigned a team, assigned a home, assigned a future.
And it was in a room at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center on Monday night that his life’s direction was determined.
It was there that the bounces of 14 ping-pong balls dictated his future. And the most consequential numbers of Cooper Flagg’s life became 10-14-11-7.
Basketball has held a draft for first-year players since 1947. The hope is that the draft will increase the “competitive balance” of the league by providing bad teams with the ability to grab the most sought-after new entrants. Pittsburgh took Clifton McNeely No. 1 that year. He never ended up playing a game for them.
Starting in 1966, the first pick was determined by a coin flip between the two worst teams in each conference, and Cazzie Russell went first to New York. To disincentivize teams from gaming the system for the top pick, the league instituted a lottery, with every non-playoff team getting the same odds for the first pick.
In 1985, NBA Commissioner David Stern picked from seven envelopes spun in a large basketball-shaped hopper, and the Knicks, with the third-worst record, earned the rights to Patrick Ewing.
Five years later, the 11 lottery teams were given weighted odds, with preferential treatment to the worst of the worst, and Derrick Coleman went to the Nets, the league’s worst team.
Over the years, the advantage given to bad teams has fluctuated. Six years ago, in response to more teams trying to game the system, the league flattened the odds for the worst teams, hoping to make the rebuilding ones think twice about totally tanking their season to win the lottery.
The process of tanking and tearing a roster down to the studs is hard to watch – Washington has gone 33-131 (.201) over the past two seasons and isn’t likely to do much better next year. Before winning just 18 games last year, the GM said they were still in their “deconstruction phase.”
Fans hate it, but understand that regardless of the league’s measures, the reward for losing is too great. Without the gravitational pull of a superstar at the center of your team’s solar system, you have no chance at a championship.
Superstars have always been bigger and more important in basketball. With only five players on the floor, one great player can cover up many cracks in the foundation.
There’s an advanced stat called usage percentage, an estimate of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor that is calculated on field goal attempts, free throws, and turnovers per possession. Michael Jordan, the No. 3 pick in 1984, led the league in usage percentage eight times during his career.
It is an imperfect number of good and bad outcomes, but it can help describe who has the ball when things happen. At Duke, Cooper Flagg’s usage was 30.9 percent.
Out of the 21 highest usage percentages for a single NBA season, five belong to one player: Luka Dončić. And after 450 games, his career mark is the highest in the league’s history: 35.5.
The way the lottery results are shown on television and the way the lottery is done are very different.
It starts with placing ping-pong balls numbered one through 14 in a mixing and drawing machine made by the Smart Play Company, who manufacture them for state lotteries. For the first pick, the balls are mixed for 20 seconds before the first ball is drawn. The next three balls are drawn after 10-second intervals.
Each team gets a set of four ball combinations. Washington, Utah, and Charlotte, the three worst teams last year, were given 140 out of the 1,000 combinations.1 New Orleans had 125, Philadelphia 90, with Atlanta (whose pick belonged to San Antonio via a trade) having the fewest with seven.
They repeat the process of mixing and drawing for the next three picks before assigning picks four through 14 by inverse winning percentage.
On Monday, it took over 13 minutes to determine the first four picks, including a four-minute explanation of the rules and various contingency plans, like what happens if the machine breaks and can’t be immediately repaired.
The lottery is observed by a single member of the front office of the 14 teams, members of the media (14, of course), and a representative from Ernst & Young to ensure everything is kosher. Matt Doria, of the NBA’s legal department, draws the balls.
The broadcast of the results, which happens some time after the behind-closed-doors drawing, is set up like a game show. The league puts 14 different representatives from the lottery teams on a stage. And their only role is to sit there and react.
The Ernst & Young consultant and a member of NBA security theatrically march on the stage to put envelopes containing the results on a lectern for Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum, who opens them slowly to allow commentators to explain what’s happening. And there’s a commercial break before the top four picks are revealed to allow for the tension to build and the event’s broadcaster to make some money.
The teams have gone through a year of losing game after game, and the fans a year of suffering, so they can be in position for everything to change.
Eight seconds of silence passed after Matt Doria drew the number 7 ping-pong ball and Katelyn West, of the NBA legal department, shouted, “Dallas.”
The Mavericks were assigned 18 of the 1,000 four-ball combinations. They became the fourth team to win the lottery with less than a two percent chance at the top pick. Ten teams had better odds.
Matt Riccardi, the Mavericks assistant general manager, sat in the third row of three, looked up when he heard West. He put his hand on his forehead, then turned to his right, tapped the assistant GM from Portland in the midsection with the back of his hand jocularly, and then shook Andrae Patterson's hand.
Had the fourth ball Doria pulled from the Smart Play Company machine read six, it would have been Portland (37 combinations for the ninth-best odds) with the No. 1 pick.
Had it been a one, it would have been Washington.
Cooper Flagg clapped softly when the camera cut to him after the Mavericks were revealed to have the first pick on the broadcast
“For us, it’s been a rough year, as you all know,” said Rolando Blackman, the Mavs’ avatar and No. 9 pick in 1981.
The hardship came 99 days earlier when Dallas traded Luka Dončić, the No. 3 pick in 2018, to Los Angeles for a package headlined by Anthony Davis, the No. 1 pick in 2012. General manager Nico Harrison became the league’s most laughed-at executive and the most despised man in Texas.
The Mavericks went 12-18 after trading away their superstar and fan-favorite, missing the playoffs (save the Play-In Game) to end up in the lottery.
The suspense over what Dallas would do with the pick was put to rest about 20 hours later. The only surprise being that the news didn’t leak after 20 seconds: The Mavs plan to select Flagg and “will not entertain the possibility of trading away the pick for a proven superstar,” sources told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.
Ten players drafted with the first overall pick have gone on to win an NBA title with the team that took them. (That is, if you count LeBron James winning with Cleveland in his second stint with the Cavaliers.)
Six teams have never had the No. 1 pick. The Mavericks, until this week, were the seventh.
Based on the latest collective bargaining agreement, which took effect when Cooper Flagg was in high school, he will sign a standard deal for the rookie wage scale. The No. 1 overall pick’s four-year contract (with the last two years as club options) is worth just over $62.7 million. Everything has already been worked out for him.
No matter who took him, Flagg will face the same pressure: to have a career that proves he was a worthy first-overall pick. If the Mavs don’t reshuffle their roster, he can get advice on how to deal with that from the two other No. 1 picks on the team: Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving.
With Dallas, he will have to deal with the expectations of a team looking to compete, not a team like Washington, Utah, or Charlotte, where the rebuild was still underway and he could ease into NBA life.
But the pressure he will face the most will come from competing against a ghost. Playing in the shadow of the memory of Luka Dončić. Flagg’s presence there will be a walking reminder to the fans of what they once had and gave up.
He doesn’t have a choice in the matter. It was decided for him; 10-14-11-7 has spoken.
Ben Krimmel is a writer from Baltimore who lives and works in New York.
The four-ball combination of 11-12-13-14 is left unassigned to keep the odds… even.