The Portland Trail Blazers ended up with the No. 11 pick while the Dalles Mavericks won No. 1 in Monday’s NBA draft lottery, giving that team the opportunity to go for Duke’s Cooper Flagg.
Chances were slim the Blazers would have ended up with the No. 1 pick. They had a 3.7% chance, but the Mavericks only had a 1.8% chance and still ended up winning the lottery.
Flagg, a 6-foot -9 inch forward, spent just one season at Duke, where he averaged nearly 20 points and led the Blue Devils to an appearance in the Final Four.
Blazers fans gathered at Rogue Eastside Pub & Pilot Brewery in Southeast Portland to watch the lottery, which happened in Chicago.
Johnny McGee, a fan since 2015 when he moved to Portland, expressed his disappointment with where the Blazers ended up in the lottery.
“My heart sank,” he said. “I came out here, I was hoping that my baby girl would get to grow up being a Cooper Flagg fan.”
Thomas Fertit has been a Blazers fan since he was 8 years old. He was also disappointed in Monday’s lottery results.
“We had that really nice stretch,” he said about the latter half of the Blazers’ season this year. “I thought we’d get rewarded maybe this time around. It doesn’t work out all the time, just like the real lottery.”
But he’s keeping the faith. He said he’ll be at the games next year.
The Blazers have held the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft four times, including in 1984, when the team chose Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan.
And 2007, when Greg Oden was selected over Kevin Durant. But that just goes to show you don’t always need to be number one to have a lasting impact.
Damian Lillard was drafted sixth overall by the team in 2012.