It's official: Cooper Flagg will declare for the 2025 NBA Draft. This means that he is officially a possibility for the Utah Jazz. It's not a foregone conclusion, but the Jazz perfected the tank, meaning they pulled out every stop for the best odds.
They are tied with the Washington Wizards and Charlotte Hornets for best odds at Flagg at 14%, and the next best odds goes to the New Orleans at 12.5%. It's not great, but it's the best Utah could have hoped for.
By getting the league's worst record, the Jazz can't fall lower than the No. 5 pick. While, of course, nobody in Utah wants them to wind up that way, the No. 5 pick being the worst-case scenario is much better than the No. 6 pick being the worst-case scenario.
However the Jazz should hope that they get the No. 1 pick, and not just because of Flagg, but because it would be a stark contrast from how the Jazz have previously done in the lottery.
The lottery has not been too kind on the Jazz
Let's get this out of the way. The reason why the Jazz have a poor history in the lottery is that they don't have much of one. Utah has typically set the standard for being consistently good. They've hardly ever depended on the lottery to form their playoff contenders.
However, when they have, it hasn't been too great. The Jazz only have a lottery history in the 21st century. This is because once the NBA integrated a lottery for non-playoff teams in the mid-80s, the Jazz had Karl Malone and John Stockton, so they didn't depend on it for the rest of the century.
Since then, the Jazz have technically been in the lottery 10 times (11 in May). However, with full context, they won 37 games or more heading into seven of those lotteries. In other words, it's fair to suggest they weren't truly depending on the lottery to build their future.
Even so, in all the times the Jazz have played the odds, they've never moved up higher than their pre-lottery position. Three times, they've moved backward. Last year, they had the eighth-best odds and wound up with the No. 10 pick, which turned out to be Cody Williams.
No comment there.
Which brings us to this year. The last time the Jazz drafted this high was in 2014, when they selected Dante Exum with the No. 5 pick. Even though the Jazz hoped to get their hands on Joel Embiid, Andrew Wiggins, or Jabari Parker, no one took issue with the Exum pick.
Without getting too much into it, Exum didn't work out, but it was nobody's fault besides the injury bug. He may have been a bust, but on the other hand, the time the Jazz had high lottery odds before 2014, they took advantage of it, despite not getting a top-five pick.
The Jazz wound up with the No. 6 pick in 2005 but managed to move up to snag Deron Williams at the No. 3 spot, and look what happened there.
A few weeks from now, the Jazz will enter the NBA lottery with the best odds for the first time in franchise history. The Jazz have never won the lottery, but that's partly because they have never really tried. If they get their hands on Flagg, not only would the Jazz get a franchise-changer, but their look would begin to turn.