Though more than two months have passed since a Mavericks player has set foot on the court, like it or not, an unavoidable buzz is building around the team. In May, near impossible odds saw Dallas figuratively and literally winning the lottery, securing the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NBA draft. Last week, as expected, they selected standout Duke forward Cooper Flagg, the most coveted NBA prospect of the last decade, save for perhaps San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama two years ago.
Naturally, the club’s improbable snagging of the 1:1 pick with a 1.8% chance was some savory red meat for the tinfoil-hat set. If there are three universal truths among the dumb-man’s-idea-of-a-smart-man citizens of the online conspiratorial man-o-sphere, it’s that 1.) the shape of the Earth is far from a settled science, 2.) anything I don’t like or understand is “woke,” and 3.) the NBA draft lottery is fixed.
Regardless, whether by dint of a weighted ping-pong ball, divine sports intervention, or owed to what hated Mavs GM Nico Harrison infuriatingly described in his post-draft presser as “fortune favoring the bold,” the fact of the matter is that Flagg is a Maverick. His addition presents the perfect off-ramp for fans still bitter about The Worst Trade in Sports History™ to set aside at least some of the ire that’s been directed toward the franchise and embrace the team once again.
I know what many (most?) of you are thinking. “So what? I don’t care. They lost me with the Luka trade, and I’m not coming back just because Nico lucked into ‘the next one.’ I can’t root for this team while he is still running it.”
To a degree, I get the sentiment. The deal that Harrison pulled in February to send away Luka Dončić, the most beloved athlete in the city and in the peak of his prime, for an aging, injury-prone Anthony Davis was professional malpractice and should have cost him his job. I’ll join right in with the “fire Nico!” chants. Yet the asinine trade was his fault, not the players’, and they’re still worthy of your appreciation. Flagg offers the possibility of a clean slate in which to do so.
Do you realize how lucky we are? This fall should have been the first time the Mavs have entered a season without a league-redefining superstar in their ranks in more than a quarter century. That has been instantaneously reversed. The line of superstar succession has been repaired. Dirk => Luka => Coop. Sure Flagg is an undeserved fig leaf that might hide Harrison’s shame, but you deny a gift from the sports gods at your own peril.
It’s been an incredibly shitty sports year. The Luka trade. Kyrie Irving tearing his ACL. The Cowboys missed the playoffs and replaced head coach Mike McCarthy with the Michael Scott of NFL coaching candidates, the totally cringeworthy and extremely uninspiring Brian Schottenheimer. The Stars once again fell short of Stanley Cup glory, faltering in the Western Conference Final for the third straight year, and fired their own head coach, Pete DeBoer, only to install a failed retread even more uninspiring than Schottenheimer in Glen Gulutzan, who failed to make the postseason in his two seasons as the Stars bench boss 12 years ago. In fact, he has exactly one playoff series under his belt as a head coach, a sweep at the hands (“webbed feet”?) of the Anaheim Ducks when he helmed the Calgary Flames eight years ago. The Rangers currently sit fourth in the AL West and are a whopping nine games back of first place Houston. It’s ugly.
And that’s just this year. Setting aside the Rangers’ unexpected World Series steal two years ago, the local sports landscape has been full of inexhaustible frustration for a decade and a half. Legitimate reasons to cheer in sports are fleeting, random, and short-lived. When you have one, you should relish it.
Ultimately, the front office of a franchise is not the team. We should be well conditioned around these parts to root for an organization despite a hatred for its decision-makers. Jerry Jones, Tom Hicks, John Daniels toward the end — there’s been no shortage of overconfident idiots who don’t deserve their position to go around. Nico Harrison is far from the first, and he won’t be the last. You shouldn’t let his failures blind you to the efforts of the players on the court. Fans certainly have a right to be bitter, but the players deserve their support, even if the front office doesn’t. Life is too short to hate the team you love.
