Jazz Given Good News on Number One Prospect Cooper Flagg

In the final weeks of the college basketball regular season, fans of tanking teams around the NBA, including those of the Utah Jazz, caught a bit of a scare when seeing a potential chance for Duke Blue Devils star and potential number one pick in this summer's draft entertain returning to school for a sophomore season.

When combining an eye-catching interview from Flagg with The Athletic hinting at a possibility of staying another year, along with Duke fans erupting into "one more year" chants in their matchup against Wake Forest, it's effectively started the conversation: could this year's projected number one pick return to school next season?

Cooper Flagg checked out with 28 PTS to "One More Year" chants from Duke fans 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/4z7kBvvkYb
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 4, 2025

In the event Flagg does stay put in Durham, it'd be a punch to the gut for Jazz fans and front offices around the league eager to land his services.

The Duke product has seemingly been slotted in as the number-one pick for the entirety of this NBA season with multiple teams punting on their season with a tank in hopes of cashing in on this year's prized young prospect. Any world in which he does stay back would shake up the class tremendously.

Though, for fans worried about Flagg's NBA future, don't hold your breath for a return to Duke truly being in the cards, barring a shocking decision.

ESPN's Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo recently dove into the chances of Flagg choosing to return to school for next season, noting the vast unlikelihood of the scenario transpiring and the steep financial implications that could come with it.

"Could a surprise tourney exit by Duke push him to further consider a return? The millions Flagg has earned in NIL money, according to the NBA executives we spoke with, might cause a hint of contemplation that most would not have expected upon him enrolling at Duke, which also says quite a bit about how much the college basketball landscape has evolved," Givony and Woo write. "However ESPN's Bobby Marks projects that Flagg returning to Duke could cost him, based on estimated cap numbers, $75 million to $125 million in potential salary on the backend of his NBA career...That potential financial loss and the possibility of a career-ending injury make for a risky proposition for a second season in college."

There's always a chance a first-round prospect in any draft decides to pass on the draft for another season, looking to stay in their current situation or continue growing before making that aspired jump. For a potential number one, that would be unprecedented, and clearly cost a large chunk of money out of Flagg's pockets.

The road to being a number-one pick has been a long one for Flagg, which inevitably led him to reclassifying one year ahead of his high school class, all in an effort to make that leap to the college and NBA-level as soon as possible. That makes you think it'd be hard to see the Blue Devil stay in school for one more, and for what could be a $100 million decision, the choice becomes easy.

So, for Jazz fans losing sleep on potentially losing out on Cooper Flagg this offseason, odds are, he'll still be on the table for whoever's lucky enough to nab him. The next topic on the agenda for Utah becomes getting the ping-pong balls to bounce their way in the lottery to make the fit come to fruition.

Follow Utah Jazz On SI on Facebook and Twitter/X and Subscribe on YouTube for breaking Jazz news videos and live streams!

Recommended Articles