Thanks to an incredibly woeful campaign and some much-needed luck, the Philadelphia 76ers get to have the chance to add to their embarrassment of riches in the talent department this summer as they are slated to snag an elite prospect in the upcoming 2025 NBA Draft.
Barring any moves, the 76ers will be picking third in this year’s draft, which is widely believed to showcase one of the deepest and most talented crop of rookies in recent memory. True enough, the quality of talent in the class of 2025 is so insurmountable that it greatly waters down whatever disappointment the team had this past season.
Cooper Flagg, who has long been the projected top prize in his draft class, will undoubtedly be the first overall pick. As of the moment, the Dallas Mavericks own the right to select first, and by all indications, they will not overthink it and go ahead by selecting the Duke standout.
Having said that, the 76ers could actually sneak in and steal the rights to select the potential future superstar — if only the Mavericks are desperate enough.
Here’s how the 76ers can steal Cooper Flagg from the Mavericks on draft night
As constructed, Dallas remains a dicey team to bet on to make noise in the jampacked Western Conference. While they do have an uber talented core even without Flagg, Kyrie Irving will miss most of next season due to an ACL injury while Anthony Davis is Anthony Davis. You already got it, right?
The Mavericks’ contingent led by Nico Harrison has shown a pretty bold tendency to openly yield opportunities for long-term success if they can maximize their current championship window. In that case, the 76ers should exploit that shortsightedness of theirs and put someone like Joel Embiid on the table if it means they can snatch the rights to pick first in the draft and select Cooper Flagg.
A triumvirate of Embiid, Davis, and Irving will be a risky nucleus due to their injury-proneness, but Dallas will not find a better collection of talent than this one (especially since Giannis Antetokounmpo doesn’t seem to be a realistic option for any team at this point).
Pivoting from Embiid to Flagg, while extremely unlikely at this very juncture, would be a dream scenario for Philadelphia, which badly needs to reinforce its future with two of their stars already on the decline.
This would normally be something that stands as a pure impossibility, but the Philadelphia 76ers cannot just gloss over the fact that the Mavericks cannot shake off their fatal flaw — having Nico Harrison.