The NBA’s top draft pick will introduce himself to North Texas in a matter of hours.<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old Cooper Flagg will host his first press conference Friday in Dallas.<\/p>\n
“I think he’s made for Dallas,” said Mavericks CEO Rick Welts.<\/p>\n
The franchise-changing selection follows the Mavs\u2019 miraculous stroke of luck when the team won the NBA Draft Lottery in May.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we won the lottery, I think in the three days following that we sold $8 million worth of new season tickets, which is quite extraordinary. Obviously, phones are ringing off the hook today,\u201d Welts told NBC 5 on Thursday, the day after the first round of the draft.<\/p>\n
Welts was at Wednesday\u2019s watch party at the American Airlines Center, along with 6,000 fans there to witness the team’s top pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was struck with how many kids were there last night. We also drafted a player who won\u2019t turn 19 until next December, so I think there\u2019s a real opportunity for a whole new generation of Mavs fans to have their hero,\u201d said Welts.<\/p>\n
The line of fans waiting to buy a Cooper Flagg jersey extended down the concourse at the AAC. Welts said about 2,000 were sold at the team store.<\/p>\n
It was a memorable night, he said, from start to finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is my first Dallas experience of getting high-fives from random fans while walking my dogs at 11 o\u2019clock at night, so that was fun,\u201d recalled Welts.<\/p>\n
The celebration comes after a tumultuous season of injuries and trades that led to fan protests.<\/p>\n
But defying a 1.8% chance of winning the draft lottery put the Mavs back on top.<\/p>\n
When asked if there was ever a doubt that Flagg would be the team\u2019s first pick, Welts replied, \u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been, I think I would probably be in witness protection program today, so I was certainly relieved when we made the pick.\u201d<\/p>\n
NBC 5 sat down with Welts right before he flew to New York to bring the superstar and his tight-knit family back to Dallas, where Flagg will wear jersey No. 32\u2014his mom’s number from high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t make this up. If I had made up that story, you wouldn\u2019t have believed me,\u201d said Welts. \u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful story and probably says everything about him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA’s top draft pick will introduce himself to North Texas in a matter of hours. Eighteen-year-old Cooper…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,3139,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-18668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114754561339087450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}