The 2025 NBA Draft lottery is now just one week away, with double-digit teams still having a shot to secure a No. 1 overall pick that is all but certain to be used for acquiring 6-foot-9 Duke basketball phenom forward Cooper Flagg. The Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets have the best probability at 14.0 percent apiece.
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Should the Jazz win the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes, the 18-year-old from Maine would join former two-year Duke basketball star forward Kyle Filipowski, a 7-foot New York native fresh off a promising rookie campaign in Utah despite falling to the early second round last year.
And that would give Utah the leading scorer of all three Duke basketball squads thus far in the Jon Scheyer era.
Filipowski, who averaged 9.6 points and 6.1 rebounds across 72 outings for the Jazz this season, led the Blue Devils in points as both a freshman (15.1 per game) and sophomore (16.4) in Durham.
-Flagg, the most decorated rookie in program history, paced the 2024-25 Blue Devils with his 19.2 points per game, not to mention the fact he also led the team in rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks.
“It was just about three years ago now that Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert, and several others got shipped away to begin the massive rebuild in Utah,” CBS Sports’ Adam Finkelstein wrote in his latest mock draft on Monday, predicting Flagg’s pro career to begin in Salt Lake City. “The hope was that the assets they acquired would one day result in their next star player. If they get Flagg, that hope will be realized…”
Of course, if Utah drops at least a couple of notches below the No. 1 overall pick, there’s still a chance the roster-developing franchise will wind up with a lottery talent out of Duke to pair with Kyle Filipowski. After all, one-and-dones Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach are both widely projected to be among the first 14 off the board at the 2025 NBA Draft in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on June 25.
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