By SCHUYLER DIXON AP Sports Writer
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas Mavericks CEO Rick Welts wasn’t thinking even for a second about Cooper Flagg when he started a staff meeting before the draft lottery by saying the club was entering the most important offseason in franchise history.
The longtime NBA executive and relatively new leader on the business side of the Mavs was thinking about the lingering fallout of the widely reviled Luka Doncic trade, not the club turning a 1.8% chance into winning the rights to draft the teenaged star from Duke. Dallas is set to make that pick Wednesday night.
“Never, ever did anybody in our organization ever even say what would happen if we win. That’s a waste of time,” Welts told The Associated Press recently. “Like, it’s unbelievable. It was hard to even get your head around.”
The self-inflicted wounds were numerous after general manager Nico Harrison’s stunning decision to send Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis in early February.
Fans were incensed. Season-ticket holders were canceling. Potential new sponsors were telling Welts they’d have to think about it.
Just like that, the Mavs had a vision to sell of a potential superstar who could someday be the face of the franchise — as Doncic was, and fellow European superstar Dirk Nowitzki before him. Just like that, despair turned to hope for plenty of people, including those under Welts who had spent weeks dealing with the wrath of a spurned fan base.
“It’s got to be the craziest reversal of fortune,” Welts said. “It would match any in the league’s history.”
Before the Doncic trade, Welts had already made a decision to raise season-ticket prices. He told the AP he had to back off on the size of the increase as he watched the visceral reaction unfold.
Welts has seen plenty in nearly 50 years with the NBA, including time in the league office and stints with Phoenix and Golden State. Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement. Accusations of widespread drug use in the early 1980s, when he says there was a widespread belief that the league would fail.
That’s not to say the Doncic fallout didn’t have a profound impact on the 72-year-old Welts, who had come out of retirement to replace Cynt Marshall just a month and a half earlier. It just means he has weathered a few storms.
And now the Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer isn’t so sure he’s ever seen the sun come back out so quickly.
“The thing that I learned through all of this experience was what I knew was like this amazing emotional tie between this team and these fans was even stronger than I think anybody who hadn’t lived here and been a part of it could ever imagine,” Welts said. “Just the outpouring of pure joy and the idea of a generational player that could change our fortunes for the next 15 years would land with us by pure luck.”
Harrison’s widely panned decision on Doncic was compounded by an injury to Davis in his Dallas debut, followed by Kyrie Irving’s season-ending knee injury a month later. The Mavs made the play-in tournament and won at Sacramento before their season — mercifully, perhaps — ended in a loss at Memphis with the No. 8 seed at stake.
Part of what made the Doncic deal so hard to believe was unloading a 25-year-old superstar in his prime nine months after leading Dallas to the NBA Finals for the first time in 13 years. The Mavs lost to Boston in five games last June.
Harrison’s reasoning was prioritizing defense, and his belief that Davis and Irving were a good enough tandem to keep Dallas as a championship contender. Flagg’s potential gave that notion a boost.
“I feel like I’m a broken record, but the team that we intended to put on the floor, which you guys saw for 2 1/2 quarters, that’s a championship-caliber team,” Harrison said. “And so you might not like it, but that’s the fact, it is.”
Welts, who believes the Mavs have work to do to bring their basketball and business sides together, will spend plenty of time during the early days of the Flagg era sharing his vision for a new arena.
It’s a big reason Welts took the job, after spending seven years with Golden State on an arena plan that moved the Warriors across the bay to San Francisco from Oakland. He says all the talks are focused on keeping the team in Dallas.
While the casino-centered Adelson and Dumont families of Las Vegas, in the middle of their second full year as owners of the Mavs, wanted gambling to be part of the formula for a new arena, the political realities in Texas have shifted the focus away from that idea for now.
There’s a new focus for Welts in what seems certain will be the final stop in an eventful NBA career: building everything around another potentially generational star after the Mavs jettisoned the one they had.
“Don’t make this sound like I’m suggesting that everyone is forgiven,” Welts said. “Luka will always be a big part of what this organization is. But for a large number of fans, it is a pathway — it’s not a pathway, it’s like a four-lane highway into being able to care about the Mavericks the way they cared about the Mavericks before.”