Monday's NBA draft lottery will change fortunes, maybe even for Raptors

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Monday is the Super Bowl for many NBA teams, including the rebuilding Toronto Raptors.

After a long, dreary winter, filled with losses galore, the payoff for all those defeats comes in the form of lottery balls. And on Monday night in Chicago at 7 ET, one lucky team’s future is going to be altered significantly.

Someone is going to come away with the chance to draft Duke freshman phenom Cooper Flagg at next month’s draft. Flagg is considered a generational talent, the rare type that can step right into the NBA at 18 years old (he doesn’t turn 19 until late December) and contribute against grown men. In time, it’s believed Flagg can be both a dominant defender and a do-it-all offensive force.

Someone else will be gutted by coming oh so close, but will be comforted by the fact that presumptive No. 2 pick Dylan Harper, a 6-foot-6 point guard who has been compared to the likes of James Harden and Cade Cunningham and would be the first choice many other years, could be theirs.

There are plenty of other good prospects in the 2025 crop (like Harper’s Rutgers teammate Ace Bailey, Baylor’s V.J. Edgecombe, Texas shooter Tre Johnson, to name a few), but Flagg and Harper are the guys franchises have been trying to steer toward for a while.

The Raptors are part of that group, even if their goal of having the best shot possible at them didn’t come to fruition. Things were looking good when the Raptors started the season a dismal 9-31, but the team went .500 the rest of the way, and ended up with only the seventh-best odds (7.5%) of jumping to first or landing in the Top 4 (31.9%).

Toronto actually has better odds (34.1%) of falling to eighth than of staying at seven (19.7%) or moving up (and if things go really poorly, a 12.9% chance of dropping two spots).

Utah, Washington and Charlotte each have 14% odds of winning the first pick and 52.1% of picking in the Top 4. New Orleans has 12.5% odds of sagging for Flagg, 48.1% of picking in the first four, Philadelphia, thanks to a masterful tank job has a 10.5% shot at Flagg, and 42.1% at the Top 4, while Brooklyn is at 9% and 37.2%, respectively.

After Toronto, San Antonio, Houston (via Phoenix), Portland, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta (from Sacramento) and the Spurs again (from Atlanta) all have outside chances.

Even if you think it’s unlikely one of the teams with the worst odds can strike gold, consider that the Hawks moved from 10 (3.7% odds) to 1 last year and in the NHL’s draft lottery a week ago, the New York Islanders made the same jump with 3.5% odds and the Utah team won the next draw for the second pick with just 1.5% odds (the NHL only allows teams to jump 10 spots, so Utah will pick 4th, from 14).

The most likely scenario for Monday is that things don’t go chalk. There will surely be some movement. Besides Atlanta’s jump last year, Brooklyn moved up six spots to pick third. In 2023, three teams each jumped two spots to pick 1, 2 and 3. In 2022, 3-of-4 teams in the Top 4 jumped. In 2021, the Raptors went from seven to four, giving them a chance to draft Scottie Barnes (New Orleans went from seven to one in 2019, Chicago went from seven to four in 2020, a year that saw three of the eventual Top 4 winners jump on lottery night.

For fun, here’s our unscientific ranking of which teams Flagg (or to a lesser extent, Harper) would impact the most if things go their way at the lottery:

1 – San Antonio. They’ve got two cracks at it. Imagine adding Flagg to Victor Wembanyama, De’Aaron Fox and rookie of the year Stephon Castle. That would make the Spurs perennial title contenders for the next decade at least. If they got Harper they’d have to consider moving Castle and/or Devin Vassell, but it would be a good problem to have.

2 – Philadelphia. Look, the Sixers would probably be happy just staying in the Top 6. Otherwise, this pick will go to Oklahoma City thanks to a bad trade made years ago. The Sixers weren’t supposed to be in this position, signing Paul George, who was coming off his best season in ages and adding him to former MVP Joel Embiid and young star Tyrese Maxey was supposed to make this a dangerous squad. Instead, everybody got hurt (even potential rookie of the year Jared McCain) and they had to do everything possible to sink as far as possible to increase their odds of keeping the pick.

Assuming there’s any chance Embiid can stay healthy, adding Flagg (or Harper) to this mix would make the Sixers pretty interesting (and they’d have a bridge to the future even if Embiid is never himself again).

3 – Houston. The Rockets just won 52 games and looked feisty in the playoffs before falling to a more experienced Golden State team and nemesis Stephen Curry in seven games). The team has no business picking anywhere close to the top, but Phoenix made a lot of mistakes, including forfeiting control of its first-rounder this year and here we are. Flagg would be an incredible fit on Ime Udoka’s defensive juggernaut and would give them a needed top dog and more juice offensively. Harper wouldn’t be as plug and play, but they could also badly use a player like him and it would allow them to move Jalen Green for help up front.

4 – Toronto. This sure seems like the last chance to add a difference maker for the Raptors for a while. There’s too much talent on hand to be awful (barring all kinds of injuries) with Brandon Ingram joining the mix and all the youngsters likely coming back improved in Year 2 or 3. If they can nab Flagg or Harper, suddenly the future is bright. Drafting third or fourth would be nice too, but Flagg or Harper are the players most needed and most likely to drive wins. If not, this looks like a team in the middle with no real shot of going deep in the postseason anytime soon.

Rounding out our rankings: Dallas (Nico Harrison would even keep his job after the Luka Doncic fiasco); Charlotte (a tire fire forever, they could use a star hoops fans in North Carolina are very familiar with); Washington (have they ever had an identity or a superstar?); Utah (haven’t had a stud like Flagg since the Karl Malone/John Stockton days); Chicago (Would take them from no man’s land to an interesting place); Brooklyn (see Washington’s entry); Portland; Atlanta.

@WolstatSun