Cooper Flagg Wins Rookie of the Year as 2026 NBA Draft Lottery Locks In a Generational Top Four
Cooper Flagg’s first NBA season ended in May with a Rookie of the Year trophy that nobody around the league found surprising. The Mavericks’ first overall pick averaged 19.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 4.1 assists, started 78 games for a Dallas team that scratched its way into the play-in, and looked like exactly the kind of two-way superstar the scouting community projected him to be.
That sets up the 2026 NBA Draft, where the league office finalized the lottery this week and the top of the board is being called the deepest at the top since 2003.
The names you need to know are AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson, and Caleb Wilson. All four are projected to go in the top five. The Athletic’s latest mock has Dybantsa first overall to the Washington Wizards, who landed the top pick after finishing with the league’s worst record. Boozer is the consensus second pick to the Brooklyn Nets. Peterson goes third to the Charlotte Hornets in most projections. Wilson rounds out the top five debate with Tahaad Pettiford.
The Dybantsa story is the most interesting one. He spent his freshman season at BYU and put together one of the best statistical seasons by a college freshman in the last decade. He averaged 22.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 1.9 blocks per game on 53 percent shooting from the field and 38 percent from three. He is 6 feet 9, 215 pounds, and built like an NBA wing. He turned 19 in December. The pre-draft consensus is that he is the closest thing to a slam dunk number one pick the league has seen since Cooper Flagg himself.
Boozer is the other generational name. The son of former NBA forward Carlos Boozer, Cam Boozer played his freshman year at Duke and put together a season that drew comparisons to a young Tim Duncan and Chris Bosh. The skepticism about him comes from physical testing data that suggests he is a less explosive athlete than the modern NBA wants out of a top-three pick. The traditional scouting eye says he is going to be an All-Star anyway.
Peterson is the guard of the class. He played at Kansas as a freshman, averaged 18 points and six assists, and is the closest thing to a Trae Young clone scouts have evaluated since Young himself.
Dylan Harper, last year’s number two overall pick, has provided a real-time test case for what the top of this draft can become. Harper just had a 12-point, 10-assist double-double in San Antonio’s Game 5 win over Minnesota in the second round, becoming the first Spurs rookie with multiple playoff double-doubles since Tim Duncan in 1998. He is 19 years old. He has not even started his second season. He is already a playoff difference-maker.
That is the bar Dybantsa, Boozer, and Peterson are being held to. The 2025 class produced Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper. The 2026 class might produce more.
The draft is scheduled for June 25 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The top picks are mostly locked in. The drama starts at six and seven, where teams like the Hornets and Wizards may try to package picks to chase a veteran star. The Lakers, of course, are reportedly in the middle of those conversations as they hunt for help next to LeBron and Luka.
The top of this draft is going to define the next decade of basketball. Get used to the names. You are about to hear them constantly.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
