Masai Ujiri views ‘little prince’ Cooper Flagg turning into Dallas’ ‘king’

In his introductory press conference, Dallas Mavericks team president and alternate governor Masai Ujiri addressed one of the most talked-about aspects of the team over the past two seasons: the departure of Luka Doncic and the arrival of Cooper Flagg. Many Mavericks fans are still heartbroken over the trade. brokered by former team president Nico Harrison.

But Ujiri opts to look forward for the organization with Flagg as the new centerpiece.

“I want to be very respectful to everybody here. And yes, there’s a healing process, with that. Luka is a Hall of Famer, a future Hall of Famer, and, but that’s the past. I always say in, in Africa we say, ‘When kings go, kings come.’ And the king went, and we have a little prince here now we’re gonna turn into a king… And really think about what we have inside us, come together, and go win. Yes, there’s no other way to do this than winning. Yes, and bringing all the players together, finding the right players. We have the draft, we have free agency, we have so many things. We have young players on our team. We have to now start focusing on this.”

He added, “We can’t cry forever. And I know there has to be a healing process here. We’ve gone through that a little bit, but we have something shiny here, and we’re going to win. Yeah, we’re going to win here in Dallas.”

Flagg does appear to be ready to make his leap to “king” status for the Mavericks. Coming off of his Rookie of the Year season, the 2025 top pick averaged 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.5 assists, and 1.2 steals in 70 games played. And Ujiri made clear his belief in Flagg’s future.

“The one difficult thing to find anywhere, anywhere in sports, it’s a generational player, and we have one. We’ve planted a Flagg here. We have one player here that can turn everything and it is so hard to find in sports.”

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