A year on from the 2025 NBA Draft, the early winners are clearer — and Cooper Flagg sits at the top.
In a one-year retrospective released by the Sporting Logically YouTube channel, the host gave the Dallas Mavericks an emphatic A-plus for selecting Flagg with the first overall pick. The verdict came with the same urgency that the Mavericks themselves played with this season.
“This guy’s been incredible,” the host said. “He wins Rookie of the Year, and it’s a crazy situation that he goes to. They just traded Luka a few months prior. Against all odds, they get the first overall pick. Then by the middle of the year, Anthony Davis is gone, they’re making all these other moves — and at the centre of it is just Cooper Flagg, who’s absolutely incredible.”
The Mavericks’ first season post-Luka Doncic was supposed to be a transition. Then injuries hit. Then the Davis trade was unwound mid-season. Through all of it, Flagg held the centre — winning Rookie of the Year, improving his three-point shot beyond preseason projections, and demonstrating an on-ball creativity that surprised even the highest expectations.
“I think he was even better offensively than people even expected him to be,” the host said. “The piece that people continue to miss is how young he is. This is not, oh, he’s 20 years old showing up to the NBA. At every step, even going to Duke and now in the NBA, he’s been so young for where he’s at, and he was incredible.”
What sets Flagg apart, the analyst argued, is positional malleability. “The defence stuff was there, and he is just so easy to build around. You can put anything around this guy and he’s going to have the skill set to make it work. That’s his superpower. He makes winning plays, he plays both ends of the floor, and anything you want to put around him, he’s going to make it work.”
Dallas now sits with a top-10 pick in the 2026 draft, additional young talent under contract, and Flagg in front of a long runway. “It’s a really, really exciting future with him there.”
The No. 2 pick has been almost as impressive. Dylan Harper, taken by the San Antonio Spurs, has spent his rookie year sharing a backcourt with De’Aaron Fox and a Western Conference Finals run in his first NBA postseason.
“As of this recording, his team’s in the Western Conference Finals,” the host said. “That’s an incredible spot to be in as a rookie there in San Antonio. It’s the perfect fit for him long-term to kind of bring himself along slowly, and then when he has opportunities, to be able to take advantage of them. His rookie stats are just not going to look as good as some of the other guys in the class, but by the end of his career, by the end of his prime, we’re going to look back on Dylan Harper as an incredible guard.”
The Spurs are already being repaid for that patience. Harper’s defence has been a pleasant surprise.
“There was always skill there defensively, and he had the physical profile — he was very strong — but he just didn’t always feel the need to guard in college,” the host explained. “He certainly felt that need in San Antonio because it’s the only way he’s going to get minutes.”
Both selections landed with teams that traded for or developed surrounding talent at the right moment. Both grading sheets read A+. And both rookies will headline a 2026 draft class that, courtesy of last fortnight’s lottery, sees Washington holding the top pick and AJ Dybantsa expected to follow Flagg’s number-one path under very different conditions.
A year on, the 2025 draft looks like one of the deepest at the top in recent memory — and the Mavericks, who got Flagg in the first place because the lottery balls bounced their way, have rebuilt a franchise around the simplest of NBA truths: when you draft the best two-way player available, everything else gets easier.
