Mavericks assistant GM Matt Riccardi says winning draft lottery extends team’s championship window to 20 years

The Dallas Mavericks are probably counting down the days until they can officially say Cooper Flagg is a member of their organization. The NBA Draft is on June 25, and with the No. 1 overall pick there’s no question who the Mavericks are picking. 

A wild sequence of events had to happen in order for Dallas to get to this point, turning the fortune of the franchise and its fans around after trading Luka Dončić in February, suffering injuries — most notably to Kyrie Irving — and missing the playoffs just a season after making the NBA Finals.

Flagg is a generational player who will just turn 19 years old in December. He projects to immediately make an impact as soon as he suits up in his first NBA game. But for a team whose public message from general manager Nico Harrison since trading Dončić has been about the short-term future, Flagg drastically alters that timeline. Having Anthony Davis, Irving and Klay Thompson means the Mavericks are built to win now, though a recent report from The Athletic suggests that Dallas intends on taking the two-timeline approach, similar to what the Golden State Warriors did a few years ago. 

There’s reason to wonder if the Mavericks are even good enough to consider a two-timeline approach, but that seems to be their plan moving forward. It may be an ill-advised approach, but at least the presence of Flagg will ensure that whatever pitfalls the Mavericks encounter in the next couple of seasons won’t drastically set the team back because they’ll have a young, budding superstar on the roster, something they stopped having after trading Dončić in February. 

Mavericks reportedly considering two-timeline approach, but they’re barely equipped to handle one

And that’s the exact thinking of Dallas’ assistant general manager Matt Riccardi, who appeared on the “Take Dat Wit You” podcast to talk about Dallas winning the lottery.

“It makes the window 20 years instead of three,” Riccardi said. “We’re trying to win it every single year, and the guys that we have, we felt like before this draft lottery, that we had a good enough team to win the championship. Now we get the chance to add the No. 1 pick to this, so we’re ecstatic for that. But it’s business as usual for us and whoever we get, which the kid from Duke, as you’ve mentioned, you’re bringing in someone that’s won everywhere he’s been, who’s played above his age everywhere he’s been, who’s gonna walk in and be ready to go and whatever that role will be.”

Riccardi certainly hinted at that two-timeline approach when talking about the possibility of balancing the presence of the veterans on the roster like Davis and Irving, while ensuring the proper development of Flagg and another young guy on the team in Dereck Lively II.

“We see it as another thing, we get to bring these guys, the 21-year-olds, the 22-year-olds on this roster, around slowly through the veterans that we have on this team,” Riccardi said. “So when those guys are done playing, I think it’ll be way more than three years. I’m hoping it’s five, six, seven years when they decide to hang it up, some of our older veterans. But when they’re done, they’re passing the torch, and they’ve shown these guys how to become NBA champions, how to win. And then that window is extended for, like I said, hopefully, 20 years.”

In theory that sounds like a great approach to have Davis mentor Flagg and watch him develop with veterans who have won at the highest level like Irving and Thompson. But in actuality, by trying to straddle both sides of the fence with two timelines, the Mavericks could paint themselves into a difficult corner to escape from when it does come time to fully build around Flagg.

Where do Mavericks go from here? Cooper Flagg forces Dallas to embrace a future the team previously dismissed

If the Mavs use all of their already incredibly slim assets to win right now, it will only handicap them further down the line when Flagg is entering his prime. They don’t have control over any of their picks between 2027 and 2030, and spending any more assets now would ensure they won’t have any draft capital to bring in young talent to surround Flagg with in the future.

Landing Flagg gave Dallas an escape hatch from executing one of the worst trades in NBA history this season, but already it sounds as though they’re not seeing the big picture and are again shorting themselves for the sake of trying to win right now. We’ll see if that plan actually works out. But from the looks of how the Dončić trade has already panned out, it’s hard to see things going in Dallas’ favor with this two-timeline approach.