Trail Blazers Won't Have to Try to Get Into Cooper Flagg Sweepstakes
Portland's brutal schedule and the strength of the Western Conference put them in strong position for one of the most anticipated draft classes in years.
The Trail Blazers need “the guy.”
Scoot Henderson’s uneven rookie season and Shaedon Sharpe’s second year being cut short by injury were two reminders that the Blazers’ rebuild still doesn’t have its foundational star, its Anthony Edwards or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander that they can definitively say they’re building around.
One of those guys—Cooper Flagg—is at the top of the 2025 draft class. People who know a lot more about this stuff than I do say there are at least a few more who could also be that good.
It’s the opposite of this year’s draft, both in talent and in stakes. When the Blazers fell back three spots in the lottery, from the fourth-worst record in the league to the No. 7 overall pick, the top decision-makers were unworried. Evaluations of the 2024 draft class were so all over the place that they thought there was a good chance they’d still be able to get who they wanted.
It ended up playing out just like that: while Joe Cronin has not directly confirmed it, I have a strong suspicion Donovan Clingan was the highest-ranked player on the Blazers’ draft board from the start, and he fell to them at the seventh pick.
Next year, more than most years, it would be helpful if Portland was one of the bottom three teams in the standings, which comes with a 14 percent chance of landing Flagg at No. 1 overall.
The good news: this team won’t have to do anything extra to be right there.