The Ringer's 2025 NBA Draft Guide

As we head into draft season, Flagg is waiting patiently to stroll up to whichever team lands the top pick in the lottery, extend his hand, and in his best Arnold voice, say, “Come with me if you want to win.”

Flagg is the big prize of the 2025 draft, but he’s also just a hardwood pup—he turned 18 years old in late December and reclassified two summers ago to enter college a year early. He doesn’t yet have one elite skill, but his ability to do a bunch of things well puts him in rarefied air. He’s a twitchy, long, and bouncy athlete, yet he likely won’t break the scale in any one category. He also doesn’t have a significant weakness. So even if a team already has a high-usage prospect in place, Flagg likely won’t struggle to find his way—in fact, he projects as the type of player who will elevate superstars to another level. He’s a capable shooter off the catch and never bails out the defense with inactivity or misguided movement. His sense for whether to attack or vacate space, depending on where the ball happens to be, is very advanced for his age, and he torments defenses with his opportunistic passing and scoring once he’s made those choices. He also relishes defensive challenges on or off the ball. He ends possessions and quickly creates and finishes in transition. It’s a holistic basketball experience.

But what’ll really bake the league’s noodle is the possibility that Flagg could become an above-average offensive hub. Flagg’s handle is a work in progress, but not in a discouraging way. He’s evolving by the minute in that sense and has shown that he’s quick from a standstill and has blossoming technique at the elbows or facing up out of a post-up. Duke’s staff has worked to create on- and off-ball opportunities for Flagg, in an effort to keep defenses from packing the paint and bothering his live dribble in traffic. This has included bringing him off pindowns to the middle of the floor and isolating or posting him up near the elbows. That said, they haven’t shied away from showcasing him as a scorer and playmaker in meat-and-potatoes middle ball screens, either. Flagg has responded to whatever the team throws his way by unraveling the college game and upping his points-per-possession pick-and-roll efficiency with each passing month of the regular season. More than anything, Flagg is adaptable—he can digest big downloads of data and apply the information quickly. 

On Bart Torvik’s advanced stats site, which tracks college box plus-minus dating back to the 2007-08 season, eight freshmen have posted a single season in the top 50 for that stat—we’re talking future All-Star-level guys like Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson; Flagg ranks 11th overall and is by far the youngest player on the list. Starting points matter when it comes to projecting who a player will be by their 25th birthday, and Flagg’s starting point is remarkable. His hand is out, ready to bring an entire franchise along with him. All that’s left is determining which franchise reaches for him.

To get a clearer sense of where Harper is headed, watch his feet—but have the pause button ready. He is one of the jewels of the draft, with the full modern tool kit: Euro-steps, stepbacks, spins, and step-throughs. Harper plays a patient game, and while he lacks top-end speed, he parcels out his short-area quickness in small, syncopated bursts. There is always an intent behind his dribbles, his footwork, his feints and hesitations. Harper’s body control, in conjunction with his ballhandling ability, grants him unique ways of throwing defenders off. He’s constantly placing the emphasis on a different syllable every time he goes down the floor. 

His on-ball command—manipulating ball screens, decisively splitting hard hedges out of the pick-and-roll like it’s second nature—ought to be illegal at his age; he only recently turned 19. And once that four-on-three advantage is created, Harper has all the live-dribble passing talent and lob touch necessary to bend defenses past their breaking point. The same command of timing Harper has on drives, he demonstrates in his facilitating—he has a knack for allowing creases to form in an overcommitted defense, getting the ball to his open man at the very last second, when the window is widest. If there is a worry, it’s that he might overrely on screens—his possessions in isolation don’t paint an overly compelling picture of a player who can create advantages all by himself. For all the acclaim Harper has gotten this season, that is a real concern for his ultimate ceiling as a shot creator, especially one without great foot speed. He’s shown himself to be a promising spot-up threat from 3, but his pull-up consistency isn’t quite where it needs to be. But give him even a half step to get his defender on his hip, and you get a glimpse of what makes Harper special.

Getting to the rim is the hallmark of Harper’s game. It also helps to be able to finish in the paint. Luckily, Harper is one of the best at that in recent NCAA history. If you strictly looked at his at-rim shooting percentage, you’d think he was a rim-running big man. 

Harper has the instincts and pedigree to be a good defender. He’s strong, with excellent pattern recognition, but he’s also a consensus top-two prospect playing for a massively underwhelming Rutgers squad. As such, the effort isn’t often there—though it sometimes isn’t for high-usage omni-guards in the NBA. Being the engine of an NBA offense is one of the most taxing commitments in team sports. It can take years to find the balance, if it ever comes at all. But if there’s that potential outcome for Harper’s career, he’s a risk worth taking.

The smooth, frictionless explosion off one or two feet. The sheer elevation. The paraglider hang time. Edgecombe’s run-jump ability is a sight to behold—there may be only a handful of players in the NBA who can match his blend of dynamic athleticism. He has absolute trust in his physical gifts, which grants him a certain level of on-court freedom not afforded to most players. Under those auspices, Edgecombe has honed an anticipatory sixth sense most commonly seen in shutdown cornerbacks. He has the skills, motor, and reaction speed to become one of the best shot-blocking guards in the NBA, to go along with his passing-lane ball hawking. And he has more of a proof of concept than most NCAA players his age, having shown off these abilities at some of the highest levels of international competition. Edgecombe was, at worst, the third-best player on the Bahamian national basketball team in the 2024 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, on a roster that also featured Deandre Ayton, Buddy Hield, and Eric Gordon. 

As ever for a player of his ilk, shooting will be the most important swing skill. It was a shaky start from the long range for Edgecombe in nonconference play, but since the New Year, his numbers have rebounded dramatically. His 3-point shooting efficiency from a standstill seems like a fairly safe bet, but the true ceiling of Edgecombe’s game will be determined by what he can do with his shot on the move, both on and off the ball. There have been glimpses of Edgecombe drilling shots off curls and some fascinating shot creation off the dribble, but his broader offensive skill set remains a work in progress.  

Edgecombe succumbs to the plight of all hyper-athletes who graduate to a higher level of competition: Wild explosiveness isn’t enough if it can’t be harnessed. Especially since he is already on the small end of acceptable wing size. His leaping ability can get him into trouble at times when he’s trying to create his own opportunities off the dribble. He has a tendency to leap too early on drives, neutralizing any advantage he’s created with his speed by having to adjust and contort in midair. Edgecombe is an unselfish player and has a solid feel for getting the ball to his teammates, but there are discrepancies between action and intent. He is faster and more explosive than his handle is consistently capable of supporting, which leads to some awkward moments when he’s caught in no-man’s-land trying to make a play happen for himself and others. But his effort, tenacity, and raw physical tools can’t be taught. Edgecombe has the ceiling of a two-way star, but he’ll need to erase the lag time between his body and mind to get there.

Bailey is among the most talented pure shotmakers to come through college basketball in the past decade. He looks more like an NBA wing than perhaps anyone else in this draft, with the height and wingspan to thrive at the next level, but it’s his head-to-toe flexibility that truly makes his scoring stand out. He’s lean and rubbery and has narrow shoulders, and although his hands are on the smaller side, he has nice mobility for his size. Altogether, his physical tools should make him a high-level finisher in the NBA—he can best defenders on the ground with creative footwork, or in the air by contorting his way to difficult angles. 

The shot looks smooth: His release point is high, he has zero problem elevating over the top of the defender, and he has good touch and consistent and repeatable shot mechanics. The jumper is Ace’s ace in the hole in any given situation, and he’s gone to it repeatedly this season at Rutgers, typically in the midrange. He had to push that easy button frequently because hardly anything was easy within that Scarlet Knights offense; beyond Dylan Harper, his team was not exactly teeming with playmakers or offensive threats who could draw attention away from him. 

The book on bothering Bailey at this point is to crowd him, and it hit the bestseller list in Big Ten play. You can be the wiggliest, most athletic player in the world, but the ball has to come to you. Against pressure his handle was often wobbly on his hand and rolling up his wrist, and as a result his decision-making plummeted. This led to some abysmal assist-to-turnover and assist-to-usage numbers and also kept him away from the rim and the free throw line. Yet, somehow, he was still able to wow us—splashing right-shoulder spins in the midrange, one-dribble pull-ups with two and three defenders draped over him, overhand short-range runners or hooks. I don’t know that he’ll ever evolve into a dynamic hub of offense, but with some added strength and weight, he should put up points well into his career.

The worries about Bailey’s limitations in the face of pressure will be lessened if he creates a positive trade-off on the defensive end. Luckily, he’s already started on that path. He can really contort and sit as low as necessary to move with smaller handlers while also extending to dissuade would-be shooters as he’s closing on them. His supplemental rim protection is rare for a player of his size and offensive potential. Ace may be best suited to follow the example of Jaden McDaniels and leverage his physical tools to become a defensive terror—only, with  much, much more to offer on offense. He still has the upside to develop into a primary option on offense, but if that doesn’t pan out, becoming a rangy merchant of havoc isn’t a bad fallback option.

I love players who can rapidly “stack” actions. Players who know, instinctively, how to respond to whatever the defense is doing with rapid-fire decisions. Jakucionis, the Lithuanian guard who left FC Barcelona to star for Illinois this season, might be the best at it of anyone in this draft. He’s the type of role-malleable triple threat that every team in the league could use. 

Jakucionis fits a flattering Euro stereotype for guards in that he has an almost joyous bobbing rhythm in the way he moves with the ball—a command for starting and stopping that really puts defenders in a less joyous place. Jakucionis, despite having credible size for his position, isn’t exceptionally long or blazingly fast. He does, however, have a low center of gravity and can be very quick from side to side or in situations when he suddenly bursts to attack after lulling his man into a spot. 

Jakucionis is also a fantastic passer. In fact, I’d put him just a step or so behind BYU’s Egor Demin in terms of pure creativity. He’s able to consistently survey where his open teammate is or is about to be, where in the defense he needs to sell a fake, what type of fake that should be, and finally, what type of pass should be the solution. I don’t penalize a prospect for experimentation (I love it, actually), and that’s why I don’t really grind my teeth over Jakucionis’s ugly turnover percentage (second highest among the 164 players who posted 150 or more pick-and-roll reps). For one, he was battling a nagging forearm injury for nearly half the season while playing in a physically demanding conference, and for another, the best problem-solvers break eggs when they’re making omelets. Jakucionis definitely has stints of letting his guard down while protecting the ball, but he tries things, and at this stage, I am all for that.

Ultimately, Jakucionis’s success at the next level will live or die with his credibility as a scorer, and while I don’t think he is an “If it’s in the air, jog the other way” type of marksman, I’m optimistic he’ll be a consistent threat as a shooter. Through January 1 (so, pre-injury), Jakucionis was hitting 41.4 of his 3s, and the types of attempts varied—a blend of stepbacks in isolation and dribble pull-ups in the pick-and-roll and catch-and-shoot looks. Post-injury, his self-created 3s dried up almost entirely, which I suspect was a result of that injury to his nonshooting forearm. Beyond that, the craft in his middle game could definitely stand to progress and evolve, but he’s great when he gets to the rim. When he isn’t finishing at the basket (71.7 percent there), he relishes contact, which allows him to be a foul-generating machine. I expect his broad-shouldered frame to become a useful hammer in the paint by his mid-20s.

Jakucionis doesn’t have the kind of length or explosiveness that would give him a margin for error on defense, and he’s not particularly disruptive with his hands, so he’ll always have to work to hold up within a greater team scheme. That said, I don’t think his frame and physical tools put him in a terrible position. He’s shown that his low center of gravity, balance, and quickness can be effective in working through screens. It’ll be a challenge, but the net result should be positive.

Queen is one of the tougher calls in this draft class—a true glass-half-full-or-empty player. He’s an older freshman, having turned 20 years old in December, but he’s also a balletic behemoth, with uncommon nimbleness in open space and surprising balance and body control when he’s driving to the rim.

Queen’s hands and touch are among his best physical qualities. He has a real knack for extracting rebounds out of the chaos around the basket, even if he manages to get only a fingertip on the ball. He’s just as clever and accurate with those mitts on defense and can create deflections or strip a driver without fouling. That said, he’s not exactly a deterrent around the rim; he’s mostly ground bound on defense and will have stretches when you’re left wondering, “Why didn’t he even attempt to go for that?” But a moment later, he can surprise with his ability to move with smaller players in ways that a lot of bigs cannot. So while he’s rarely, if ever, making the emphatic block over the top, he’s capable of snuffing out attempts at ground level before they happen. 

That touch carries over into his offensive game and is particularly visible in his passing. Few big guys in this draft, if any, can go toe to toe with Queen when it comes to overall passing tools. He’s produced some eye-popping moments this season with his passing touch, whether in tight spaces around the rim, firing a laser to a cutting teammate, or rifling one-handed skips to shooters on the opposite side who are spotting up. 

We expect prospect bigs who play strictly inside the arc to be highly efficient scorers—after all, they’re playing right near the rim. Typically, we’d want a big’s 2-point percentage to be north of 65, but Queen has shot only 55.8 percent inside the arc. But there’s some important context to consider. For one, when he’s actually at the rim, he’s great—68.4 percent there and 48.8 percent in the paint overall. For another, he played a large percentage of his minutes with Julian Reese, a rim-running, post-up big. As a result, Queen attempted way more 15- to 18-foot 2-pointers than he should have. I don’t see Queen ever becoming a dynamic shooter, but when his feet are set, he has the touch, energy transfer, and release point to eventually turn those long 2s into 3s. He’s also smooth and looks the part from the free throw line, at 75.5 percent on 208 attempts. 

Overall, scouting Queen is a never-ending back-and-forth between marveling over his skill and fretting over how he’ll adapt to the NBA—the speed of the game, the size of the athletes, the ruthless accountability. If he doesn’t become a semi-dependable shooter or a lob threat, what are the conditions in which he’d thrive? There are still too many instances when, because of his lapses in attention to detail, he leaves opportunities on the table for his talent to impact the game. To maximize who he can be, Queen will have to find a way to adopt a mentality of doing his work early as opposed to waiting until a situation is dire before he springs into action.

Calling Maluach’s rise over the past four years meteoric feels like an understatement. Four years ago, the South Sudanese refugee became the youngest-ever enrollee at an NBA Academy, at just 14 years old. It was his first time playing organized basketball. At 16, Maluach became the third-youngest player ever to play in a FIBA World Cup. The following summer, he was—by a wide margin—the youngest competitor in men’s basketball at the Olympics. He’s had several lifetimes of experience in these past four years alone. Yet we’re still just at the ground floor. 

One can assume Maluach’s role on the floor from one glance at his measurements. Maluach has a 9-foot-8 standing reach—1 inch longer than Victor Wembanyama’s and 1 inch shorter than Rudy Gobert’s and Duke alumnus Mark Williams’s. He has an unlimited catch radius on lobs; he can cordon off the painted area simply by spreading his arms. But it’s 2025—the NBA is no country for plodding bigs. There are interesting wrinkles in Maluach’s profile that suggest a possible deviation from the Gobert archetype. For one, his touch is exceptional for his size: He’s a good free throw shooter, he can gently guide lobs into the basket as routinely as he can flush them home, and he has the coordination to catch passes from uncomfortable angles. His screen craft is nuanced for a teenager, and his scoring efficiency as a finisher out of the pick-and-roll is astronomically high compared to just about every lottery big man of the past decade.     

Players of Maluach’s archetype are typically seen as floor raisers on defense, but his unique style of pick-and-roll defense could be more of a ceiling play. His arms are constantly in motion, moving up and down like he’s an anthropomorphic mini-golf windmill that follows you around the fairway. He can get absurdly low in his defensive stance without losing his range of motion or velocity moving backward and laterally. Because of this, there is almost a hubris in Maluach’s defensive tendencies—he plays at the level of the screen in pick-and-rolls because he thinks he can; he dances on the perimeter with guards because he thinks he can. And if he can’t, he’ll bet on his own recovery speed and ridiculous reach to get back into the play. His ability to blow up plays in unconventional ways is something that Duke has consistently put to the test. The technique isn’t always sound, and the results aren’t always there. When he’s lost on a play, it can look really bad. But confidently defending in space requires both a skill and a mentality that players of his ilk rarely demonstrate with the same enthusiasm. It’s something NBA teams will want to see him test the limits of—if he figures it out, he could be the rare defensive anchor who raises both the floor and the ceiling of a team.  

It does skew some of his data, however. Because of the amount of time Maluach spends defending outside the paint, his defensive rebounding numbers are unexceptional (he has one of the highest offensive rebounding rates in college basketball, though). His block percentage, while solid, doesn’t reflect his outlier tools. He wouldn’t be the first Duke center posting underwhelming numbers to get drafted in the lottery—Dereck Lively II’s counting stats were paltry, but his defensive influence was never in question. (To be fair, Lively’s block percentage was an order of magnitude higher than Maluach’s.) How teams reconcile the ho-hum numbers with both Maluach’s on-court context and his absurd potential will determine just how high he can go in the draft.

Johnson is one of the Real Hooper champions of this draft, a player sure to spawn swarms of feisty Twitter warriors huffing the fumes of the unbelievable highlight reels of him scoring in every which way. Falling down, spinning over either shoulder, hand glued to his face—it doesn’t seem to matter. Johnson is the most talented pure scorer in this class. His production as a freshman in the cold and ruthless SEC tournament was undeniably impressive, but his team’s success was very up-and-down. This raises a question: Has he been put in a tough position because of the quality of his roster (or his coaching), or has his roster been put in a tough position because of his style of play?

Johnson’s intoxicating combination of size and scoring gives him the look of a primary offensive option at the highest levels, but his tools may be better suited for a different role. Johnson’s speed, mobility, and dynamism as a shooter give him immense gravity on the floor, which should translate immediately to the NBA level. He’s also flashed some signs that he could become a nifty passer within the flow of an offense. Overall, he’s what I like to call a “pilot light” guy—someone who burns hot enough to fuel an entire offense … but can also burn everything down if the flame isn’t controlled. My instinct would be to put him in a position where his voracious scoring appetite can run wild, primarily working when the ball is swung to him, moving off the ball, or attacking switches where he has an advantage.

Because of his higher center of gravity, narrower side-to-side range in his handle (he’s particularly weak going left), and decent-but-not-super speed from a standstill, Johnson is doing the bulk of his work beyond the arc and facing up in the midrange. It’s good to have size if you’re going to play that way, and he does. At 6-foot-6 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan, he’s got the frame and the type of high release point on his shot that allow him to reach into the tool bag and get to work whenever he wants. On that front, he’s been very effective this season: Through 33 games (17 in conference) at decent volume, he’s been incredibly effective from 3 in transition, handling it in the pick-and-roll, and coming off screens. He’s a threat with the ball and is a creative and angular scorer, although his rim pressure could stand to improve, which eats into his opportunities at the line. Tre is like that “Wolverine looking at a picture frame” meme, and his pull-up jumper is what’s in the frame. This leads to a lot of settling: Through 33 games, Johnson has taken 95 dribble pull-up 2s and 99 dribble 3s, but only 80 total shots at the rim.

Johnson’s frame and attentiveness can be a challenge defensively as well. He’s not particularly disruptive creating deflections or turnovers. Screen awareness and navigation are a challenge for all young perimeter players, so it’s not a surprise that Tre will have stretches when it seems like his attentiveness is causing his feet to be behind the play and his arms and hands are trying to do the catching up, which has caused him to be fairly foul prone.

The first thing you notice about Philon is just how damn hard he plays. It’s uncommon for a player as slight as he is to consistently put himself in the line of fire. He hounds the point of attack, over and around screens, with splayed-out strides. He’ll beat everyone to the punch on an offensive rebound. He’ll take bumps if it means getting a stop at the end of the play. Real small-dog energy. 

The Alabama guard has the type of game that could serve as a case study in a college lecture on classical mechanics. It’s predicated on speed, but not in the ways one might expect. It’s not necessarily his maximum end-to-end velocity that is exceptional, but how quickly he starts, stops, and bends. His curvilinear acceleration—the speed with which he can turn a corner—creates advantages for him on both sides of the screen, as an initiator on offense and a navigator on defense. He knows how to create advantages for himself and has the vision and timing to pass his teammates open.

Philon’s vertical pop is a bit underwhelming, but he combats that lack of explosiveness by adjusting his time signatures: His drives to the rim are less run-jump and more skip-hop-lunge. There aren’t many players in the class better at downshifting their speed in the paint: His jail dribble is arresting; his floater is one of the very best in college basketball.

Teams will wonder about Philon’s true shooting potential. Long-range consistency has eluded him in Tuscaloosa, after he hit 41 percent of his 3-point attempts in his final year of high school. And as much as Philon relishes in physical play, his frame may always present some limitations—as poised and fluid as he is as a mover, he can get rattled on screens. Philon has a rare motor and a hunger that allows him to play far bigger than his size at the college level. But without outlier athletic traits, some of the more unconventional positives in Philon’s game could be neutralized in the NBA. Still, players with this level of competitive fire have a decent track record of being better than the sum of their parts—and there is a clear outline of a two-way guard with dribble-pass-shoot capability. Such players rarely make it past the top half of the first round.

Fears presents a strong case against nominative determinism. The young Sooner, in defiance of his name, plays with determination and audacity. He invites physicality on drives, using the force of his downhill velocity to shield him from the contact that awaits him near the basket. If you factor in both ball and body control, there might not be another prospect with a better first step and handle in the class. The ability to consistently pressure the rim is one of the most sought-after skills in basketball, and Fears has a natural blend of top-end speed, slithery pacing, and relentless attitude. He has some of the hard parts down pat. The rest is a work in progress. 

Although one of the youngest prospects in the draft, not turning 19 until mid-October, Fears had the highest usage rate of any freshman in the nation. There are a few things that come with that territory. For starters, he turns the ball over a ton. And while he can be an effective playmaker, he often finds openings for his teammates as a by-product of his physical skills rather than creatively processing several frames ahead. He confidently takes deep, NBA-range pull-up jumpers, but his accuracy has been brutal outside of a few streaky performances. He gets into the paint with ease and draws fouls at an excellent rate for a player his size—even better than either Ja Morant or Damian Lillard in their final college seasons—but he’s not a particularly nuanced finisher once he gets to the rim, hampered by a lack of strength and unremarkable vertical explosiveness. He expertly shifts gears and changes speeds with the ball moving downhill, but it’s when he’s set his mind on scoring around the basket that he runs into the young man’s tendency of playing too fast. He hasn’t acquired the full decelerative tool kit yet, and it occasionally shows in the lack of control he has going up with the ball. 

That’s a lot of buts! But—when it all clicks? When the controlled handle couples with the speed as he turns the corner, when the pull-up game is aligned just so, he has the look of a top-five prospect with clear pathways to stardom. With refinement of his jumper and some time spent building his core and lower body strength, Fears has the makings of a potent lead guard. Without them, Fears’s glaringly obvious gifts could get obscured at the next level.

A season-ending left foot injury in February derailed what had been an outstanding run for Sorber, who was in the midst of one of the best-ever freshman campaigns for a Georgetown big man. That’s lofty but earned praise, placing him right up there with Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Greg Monroe, and Othella Harrington—all 10-plus-year NBA veterans at the very least. Sorber is a throwback, right down to his choice to commit to ol’ Big Man U. He gets low and wide in the post, sets bone-crushing screens, and understands how to leverage his verticality on defense without fouling. The foundation is rock-solid. What makes him so intriguing is the skills he’s amassed on top of it. 

One of Sorber’s gifts is his court mapping. He has a sense for where everyone should be on the floor, which allows him to make instinctive, split-second passes out of just about every play type. Nothing fancy, but he can be a playmaker down on the blocks or in the high post, in the short roll or out of dribble handoffs. When he crashes the offensive glass, the biggest concern isn’t how quickly he’ll go back up, but how quickly he’ll spray the ball out to a wide-open shooter. 

Shooting will be the big determining factor for Sorber’s high-end outcomes because he probably won’t be a compelling rim runner at the next level. Because of his lack of size and the long load-up time of his vertical explosion, his avenues for success in the pick-and-roll will largely depend on both his passing and his ability to stretch the floor from 3. That could come with time; he’s been a solid free throw shooter dating back to high school, and while the percentages aren’t good, he hasn’t been afraid of taking open looks from deep.   

Sorber’s defense is very much in the eye of the beholder. As a slightly undersized NBA center without outlier athleticism, he may have a clear cap on his defensive ceiling. But he has real lateral mobility for a player his size, allowing him to credibly defend in space on the perimeter and recover for blocks on drives into the lane. He pries the ball loose using his strong hands and quick reaction time. He plays with a deep intuition, reflected in both the film and the numbers. There simply aren’t many college players in the past 20 years who have his steal and block rates and also averaged fewer than three fouls per 40 minutes. He creates moments of rupture on defense and does so cleanly. All while serving as a defensive lightning rod in his freshman year. In that light, Sorber’s discipline is damn near monk-like.  

There’s a unique blend of skills, production, and youth here that adds up to a lottery-caliber talent. As a freshman, Sorber plays the game with the maturity of a four-year senior. It’s the greenest flag in his evaluation.

It might not be a smart move trying to pitch the idea of Murray-Boyles in an elevator. He’s a remarkable defender who blends instinct and intelligence with strength, catlike reflexes, and lateral agility that’s unique for his frame. But … he’s a tweener (strike one) who doesn’t really shoot (strike two) and whose obvious playmaking vision and instincts are stymied by a neutral assist-to-turnover ratio (strike three)—without the absurd athleticism that allowed a player like Zion Williamson to transcend such mortal limitations (OK, we’re done here, pal).

There aren’t too many success stories in the NBA with a prospect profile like CMB’s. That’s a significant barrier; teams are looking for precedents to follow. Just watch him play, though. It isn’t hard to imagine Murray-Boyles as a Swiss Army knife in the pick-and-roll on both sides of the ball. He can rumble into a blitz, creating havoc for the ball handler with his quick hands and broad frame; he can operate in the two-man game himself as either the initiator or the roller. He has the quickest hands in the class and would be a terror as a help defender digging at the nail. CMB’s brand of versatility may be unorthodox, but his particular gifts and outright motor could give shape to a defense. 

On offense, Murray-Boyles is a handful in the post, where his power, footwork, and passing vision really shine. Of course, there aren’t many teams in the NBA clamoring for a 6-foot-7 post hub these days. South Carolina has given CMB plenty of room to explore the limits of his offensive repertoire—his usage rate is up there with the biggest names in college basketball. His on-ball creation is still a work in progress, as evidenced by his turnovers, but for a player with his oxlike frame, Murray-Boyles has shown the ability to vary his drives by changing speeds and accentuating either his touch or his bullying force, depending on the situation.   

As reductive as it sounds, CMB’s trajectory could very well come down to his shooting. Draymond Green once had positional concerns despite outstanding defensive aptitude, but his gradual improvements from behind the arc (and a David Lee hamstring injury) ultimately helped him get his foot in the door at Golden State. It’ll be an uphill climb for Murray-Boyles, but teams have been looking for their own personal Draymonds for more than a decade, and CMB actually has the skill set, not just the chalk outline of one, to make it happen.

High-level floor spacers who can knock down shots from beyond the arc in a variety of ways do not typically come in a brawny, bully-ball body type, but Knueppel has a chance to be one of the best of a rare bunch. He won’t consistently splash shots moving side to side with a phone booth’s worth of space, but he’s a major threat after setting a screen, and he’s money spotting up as a spacer (47 percent on spot-up 3s on the season). That shooting prowess, combined with his ability to consistently make basic reads and the flashes of creating his own shot in the midrange, have had my mind spinning about what else he could become.

Before this college basketball season, I wondered aloud whether Knueppel would wind up being Duke’s primary ball handler. While I still think he has some real potential in that area, I was probably a little ahead of myself on the timeline. Knueppel has polished footwork and shot mechanics in the midrange, but he’s still in the process of feeling comfortable burrowing his way into the paint with a live dribble and administering contact while staying balanced. The question going forward will be how much of a difference added strength and tightening the handle make because he has the tools to immobilize a defense with his ballhandling.

Knueppel is a high-feel player. Defenses pick him up beyond the arc because of his shooting ability, and the vast majority of the time, he forces his defender to chase him over screens. Once inside the second level of the floor, he’s repeatedly shown a sense for how the defense is tilting to take away his primary passing options, which, if we’re being honest, are among the best in college basketball. Very few teams are equipped to combat both a gargantuan rim-running lob target like Khaman Maluach and a springy and savvy forward like Cooper Flagg, and that creates a vending machine of kick-out opportunities. On the season, Knueppel is posting a 1.15 points-per-possession efficiency (93rd percentile) when the help defense is forced to commit to taking away his rolling big man.

Knueppel’s margin for error on the defensive end will be much slimmer. Despite having respectable size at 6-foot-7 and a lower body like a Humvee, Knueppel’s ability to navigate off-ball actions or contain ball handlers on an island in the NBA is a real question mark. It’s never an issue of effort or technique; instead, it seems like his feet, hips, and legs are stuck in mud whenever he tries to turn the corner and chase his man. Physical improvement, specifically lateral mobility and strength, will be on the docket in the pros, but his mastery of smaller details, such as a familiarity with his team’s scheme and the opposition, will likely make the difference between whether he’ll sink or swim on that end of the floor.

Demin is the Three-Eyed Raven of this draft—he sees everything at all times. He is the most talented all-around passer in the draft, spotting cutters and weakside looks from 3 that others simply do not. He makes simple reads within the flow of the offense, whether he’s playing off the catch and attacking a closeout or catching the ball in the middle of the floor, but most importantly, he’s gifted at using his outside-the-box thinking to pry open passing windows. With a live dribble, he excels at using his terrific size to sling pinpointed darts with overhand touch. And, crucially, he passes a shootable ball—they’re typically on time and on target, with the right amount of ball deceleration so that the recipient can flow into their motion.

Some players put pressure on the defense with their scoring and have to learn how to get rid of the ball once they garner too much attention. But Demin’s game is inverted in that way: He’s almost always looking to get rid of the ball. While he shows flashes of scoring prowess at all three levels of the floor, he struggled to score in any fashion when BYU’s schedule turned to (the far more physical) Big 12 play. Demin’s not an especially shifty athlete—his posture is fairly upright—and the seams can really show in his handle when teams apply ball pressure. With a clear line to the rim, he’ll attack a driving lane and punch it, but otherwise he’ll rely on extension and evasion at the rim—or, sometimes, he’ll neglect to pressure at all. 

When his shot is falling, Demin can thrive by simply making the correct read and capitalizing on it with his creativity. When it’s not, defenders often overplay the roller and dare him to take those above-the-break shots; if that continues, it’s difficult to imagine him being more than a supplementary handler who’d do best next to a big-time scorer.

The defensive profile is what you typically see from players of his type. But despite the poor lateral mobility, lean frame, and rigid posture, the effort is not a question. Demin’s anticipation is good, and his combination of hand-eye coordination and size helps him get into higher passing lanes and create deflections. I just wouldn’t bet on him ever being a plus defender.