The Dallas Mavericks, with 1.8 percent odds, won the first overall selection in the 2025 NBA Draft during Monday’s lottery. It’s the first time in franchise history that the team has moved up.

It’s a stunning, seismic change in the team and franchise’s fate, one which had been awfully bleak after the team’s stunning trade of Luka Dončić last February. Since that transaction, Dallas had found itself stuck with an aging core with no immediate hopes of contention after Kyrie Irving suffered a torn ACL last March. Now, thanks to the team earning the rights to draft Cooper Flagg, the 18-year-old prospect from Duke who’s universally seen as the league’s best No. 1 selection not named Victor Wembanyama since Anthony Davis in 2014, Dallas suddenly has flexibility that had not been granted to the team prior to this unlikely gift.

Dallas had the league’s 11th-best odds at the top selection after a 39-43 season, which featured a failed attempt at making the postseason that ended against the Memphis Grizzlies in the second Play-In Tournament game. Now, Dallas has so many viable paths laid out ahead of the franchise. It could rebuild outright, rapidly tossing out veteran players in favor of new front office leadership that’s incentivized to join a project featuring Flagg as the centerpiece. It could also use the first overall selection to tempt teams like the Milwaukee Bucks for Giannis Antetokounmpo, who seems likely to be available for trade this summer. But Dallas could also add Flagg to a core ready to win now, despite the team’s relatively short timeline with 33-year-old Irving and 32-year-old Davis. Because Flagg, despite being one of the youngest players in this year’s NBA draft, can help teams immediately.

There’s so much more analysis to come, and we’ll lay out all the options on Tuesday. But if nothing else, think of the Dallas fanbase. On Monday, we published the results of our exit interview, a fan survey that focused on the season that was. In that survey, 70 percent of respondents answered one, or “least excited,” about the season to come. The past months had sapped and sucked joy from what was a fandom that had been in the NBA Finals not even one year ago.

Now, finally, Dallas has hope again.