2025 NBA Draft Prospect Part 3

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

The one concern I have with the Duke prospects is SOS, I want to see them perform well against 2-3 good teams in tourney. Duke's sched has kinda been lightweight and it makes me wonder what Flagg's #s would look like if he had played on an SEC team.

[Naysorn]

Feels like this draft is gonna have a few guys in the lower rounds pop out of no where. Thoughts on the 1-15 range:

Consensus top 5
Cooper
Dylan
VJ
Ace
Tre

Depends...
Thiam - high upside, depends on if he declares
Condon - strong upside, depends on future performance
Maluach - high upside, but lacks production in certain categories. Not a big fan tbh, but he's underutilized, so who knows
Fears - Could be a dynamic guard. Feels like he might struggle with on-ball shooting in the NBA, but the ball-handling skills and driving ability is there
CMB - Strong 2-way player who needs a jumper and to transition to a wing
Jase - depends on future performance, probably not the player for us though

Outside chance
Traore - that shot needs work
Danny Wolf - ? on defense. I'd give him serious consideration if it turns out his D is not that bad

May be solid, but ultimately boring/non-sexy picks
Asa Newell
Derik Queen
Thomas Sorber
Noa Essengue - the length and athletic profile is nice, but he doesn't have much on-ball/self-creation ability outside of catch+drive, transition, and straight line drives
Rasheer Fleming - looks like a pure role player, could be an elite role player though
JT Toppin - not too familiar with him, but seems like another role player

Out of the convo atm
Kasparas - With Ingram, RJ and IQ, on-ball offense is less needed..his value was in shooting consistency and it's dropped off
McNeeley - not a fan of high floor low upside players, even if they're serviceable
Kon Knueppel - same as above
Egor - worse situation than Kasp with his scoring
Ben Saraf - don't know enough, but lack of 3 point shooting, athleticism and defense is too much for me

what is the upside on the top 5

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

Ace had like 3 great games and he's consensus top 5? Nah man, he's still had a weak season for a hyped prospect.

Ace's 10% outcome is a Jaylen Brown type (lowkey Brown actually makes the Celtics WORSE as a high USG player, it's crazy to theorize and think about how good they would be with a better player making similar bank) and I'd probably give him a coinflip chance of just being an outright bust who doesn't get 2nd contract. Everything else inbetween isn't remotely worth a top pick.

[Yallbecrazy]

The one concern I have with the Duke prospects is SOS, I want to see them perform well against 2-3 good teams in tourney. Duke's sched has kinda been lightweight and it makes me wonder what Flagg's #s would look like if he had played on an SEC team.

I believe BPM does adjust somewhat for SOS, but the main thing is how much have all these guys helped each get easier looks and better indicators? Kneuppel (and Sion)as 3pt shooters, Proctor as a playmaking guard who can also shoot. Malauch as a lob threat and Flagg as a do it all everything. 8 of their 9 rotational guys having BPMs over 7, what would they look like on South Carolina?

I think Duke will win the tourney despite having the SEC being insanely good this year.

[RoteSchroder]

Kasp fits fine with our team. His positional size and shooting would fit nicely. Also would probably be in one of the first tiers talent wise so if he dropped to us at 7-8-9 then he's absolutely on the table as a pick. An as of now he's a consensus top 5 not Tre. Although that might change by draft. EIther way it looks like the top 6 absolutely has Jak in it.

he's been gradually dropping on a lot of mocks and many ppl here don't like him

Essentially, if he's not an elite scorer or shooter, then I kind of don't see the point considering his athletic profile and defense aren't above average. There's no point in an on-ball guard who struggles to score. I'd hope for a poor man's Harden/mini-Doncic archetype, don't know if he'll get there though. If he turns into Podz level, I'd say that would be disappointing.

Do you understand how good Brandin Podziemski is? He's one of the top guard defenders in the league as a 2nd year player and has all the potential in the world for his offense to catch up over the next 2-3 years. There's a reason he's starting on a team with championship aspirations surrounded by NBA legends who all like him and understand he is a winner.

Also hyping Thiam is sad.

Podz is shooting 10 PPG on 52.8 TS% with Curry attracting all the attention. We don’t need another bum role player, we need a Curry.

Thiam is probably Maluach level as a prospect, but has shown more offensively.

[RoteSchroder]

Feels like this draft is gonna have a few guys in the lower rounds pop out of no where. Thoughts on the 1-15 range:

Consensus top 5
Cooper
Dylan
VJ
Ace
Tre

Depends...
Thiam - high upside, depends on if he declares
Condon - strong upside, depends on future performance
Maluach - high upside, but lacks production in certain categories. Not a big fan tbh, but he's underutilized, so who knows
Fears - Could be a dynamic guard. Feels like he might struggle with on-ball shooting in the NBA, but the ball-handling skills and driving ability is there
CMB - Strong 2-way player who needs a jumper and to transition to a wing
Jase - depends on future performance, probably not the player for us though

Outside chance
Traore - that shot needs work
Danny Wolf - ? on defense. I'd give him serious consideration if it turns out his D is not that bad

May be solid, but ultimately boring/non-sexy picks
Asa Newell
Derik Queen
Thomas Sorber
Noa Essengue - the length and athletic profile is nice, but he doesn't have much on-ball/self-creation ability outside of catch+drive, transition, and straight line drives
Rasheer Fleming - looks like a pure role player, could be an elite role player though
JT Toppin - not too familiar with him, but seems like another role player

Out of the convo atm
Kasparas - With Ingram, RJ and IQ, on-ball offense is less needed..his value was in shooting consistency and it's dropped off
McNeeley - not a fan of high floor low upside players, even if they're serviceable
Kon Knueppel - same as above
Egor - worse situation than Kasp with his scoring
Ben Saraf - don't know enough, but lack of 3 point shooting, athleticism and defense is too much for me

what is the upside on the top 5

I don’t really care about the top 5 atm cause we’re not drafting there. Just getting them out of the way by putting them there.

It’s the safer picks in terms of production and they also have the most hype. 4 out of 5 of them have solidified themselves in mocks for a while now.

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

The one concern I have with the Duke prospects is SOS, I want to see them perform well against 2-3 good teams in tourney. Duke's sched has kinda been lightweight and it makes me wonder what Flagg's #s would look like if he had played on an SEC team.

I believe BPM does adjust somewhat for SOS, but the main thing is how much have all these guys helped each get easier looks and better indicators? Kneuppel (and Sion)as 3pt shooters, Proctor as a playmaking guard who can also shoot. Malauch as a lob threat and Flagg as a do it all everything. 8 of their 9 rotational guys having BPMs over 7, what would they look like on South Carolina?

I think Duke will win the tourney despite having the SEC being insanely good this year.

Yeah I'm praying no because I bet Auburn, Duke and Alabama preseason equal amounts and got Auburn at +3000 while Duke was at +1000. I'm probably going to take Duke as winner in a few buy-in pools to further hedge Auburn with.

'• 96% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-21 KenPom offense pre-tournament.
• 91% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-31 KenPom defense pre-tournament.'

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

he's been gradually dropping on a lot of mocks and many ppl here don't like him

Essentially, if he's not an elite scorer or shooter, then I kind of don't see the point considering his athletic profile and defense aren't above average. There's no point in an on-ball guard who struggles to score. I'd hope for a poor man's Harden/mini-Doncic archetype, don't know if he'll get there though. If he turns into Podz level, I'd say that would be disappointing.

Do you understand how good Brandin Podziemski is? He's one of the top guard defenders in the league as a 2nd year player and has all the potential in the world for his offense to catch up over the next 2-3 years. There's a reason he's starting on a team with championship aspirations surrounded by NBA legends who all like him and understand he is a winner.

Also hyping Thiam is sad.

Podz is shooting 10 PPG on 52.8 TS% with Curry attracting all the attention. We don’t need another bum role player, we need a Curry.

Thiam is probably Maluach level as a prospect, but has shown more offensively.

You only go after a Curry when a Curry is available. Just piling all the guys with perceived self-creation ability at the top and not filtering out which ones are legit while leaving elite role players at the bottom of the barrel is poor evaluation. Calling Podz a "bum" is wild. He's on pace to becoming a potential borderline all-star and impacts winning at an extremely high level.

And honestly here are the real stats that matter with Podz:

3PAr up .085
FTr up .034
FT% up .124
2PT% up .027
AST% up 1, TOV% down 2.1
USG% up 2.2
Stock% up 0.8

and this is after having a pretty common sophomore slump where he was trying to do too much

[RoteSchroder]

Do you understand how good Brandin Podziemski is? He's one of the top guard defenders in the league as a 2nd year player and has all the potential in the world for his offense to catch up over the next 2-3 years. There's a reason he's starting on a team with championship aspirations surrounded by NBA legends who all like him and understand he is a winner.

Also hyping Thiam is sad.

Podz is shooting 10 PPG on 52.8 TS% with Curry attracting all the attention. We don’t need another bum role player, we need a Curry.

Thiam is probably Maluach level as a prospect, but has shown more offensively.

You only go after a Curry when a Curry is available. Just piling all the guys with perceived self-creation ability at the top and not filtering out which ones are legit while leaving elite role players at the bottom of the barrel is poor evaluation. Calling Podz a "bum" is wild. He's on pace to becoming a potential borderline all-star and impacts winning at an extremely high level.

Borderline 10 PPG all-star with a negative BPM who loses with multiple HoFers on his team and needs a 40 year old Jimmy Butler to save him. Ok

Butler goes out with back spasms for one game and this bum loses to Philly of all teams going 2 for 8 with 5 points and a team worst -16. Wow, that’s some all-star level stuff

[dohboy_24]

If that happens we would get Johnson to drop to us. That's pretty damn good man. I have Johnson as an elite scorer in the NBA he's one of the best pull up shooters in college right now and ahead of the top 3 in that part of the game.

I'm not entirely sold on Tre Johnson, especially as a prospect who could replace or complement what we already have with our current trio of young wings (Gradey, Ja'Kobe, Ochai).

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

Podz is shooting 10 PPG on 52.8 TS% with Curry attracting all the attention. We don’t need another bum role player, we need a Curry.

Thiam is probably Maluach level as a prospect, but has shown more offensively.

You only go after a Curry when a Curry is available. Just piling all the guys with perceived self-creation ability at the top and not filtering out which ones are legit while leaving elite role players at the bottom of the barrel is poor evaluation. Calling Podz a "bum" is wild. He's on pace to becoming a potential borderline all-star and impacts winning at an extremely high level.

Borderline 10 PPG all-star with a negative BPM who loses with multiple HoFers on his team and needs a 40 year old Jimmy Butler to save him. Ok

Butler goes out with back spasms for one game and this bum loses to Philly of all teams going 2 for 8 with 5 points and a team worst -16. Wow, that’s some all-star level stuff

You know last year I thought you made a number of intelligent comments and posts but it's as if someone hacked your account recently and you're an entirely different poster. You're going off on a rant about him not being an all-star right now as if many 2nd year players accomplish that and ignoring entirely the fact I said he's on a trajectory to becoming a borderline all-star. Very irresponsible reply by you.

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

I can't believe Rote is commenting on individual game samples and tying them to the fate of a player. That's reddit stuff right there.

Podz is lightyears ahead of a guy like Donte DiVincenzo at the same age.

[RoteSchroder]

You only go after a Curry when a Curry is available. Just piling all the guys with perceived self-creation ability at the top and not filtering out which ones are legit while leaving elite role players at the bottom of the barrel is poor evaluation. Calling Podz a "bum" is wild. He's on pace to becoming a potential borderline all-star and impacts winning at an extremely high level.

Borderline 10 PPG all-star with a negative BPM who loses with multiple HoFers on his team and needs a 40 year old Jimmy Butler to save him. Ok

Butler goes out with back spasms for one game and this bum loses to Philly of all teams going 2 for 8 with 5 points and a team worst -16. Wow, that’s some all-star level stuff

You know last year I thought you made a number of intelligent comments and posts but it's as if someone hacked your account recently and you're an entirely different poster. You're going off on a rant about him not being an all-star right now as if many 2nd year players accomplish that and ignoring entirely the fact I said he's on a trajectory to becoming a borderline all-star. Very irresponsible reply by you.

Have u looked in the mirror. You’ve got to be trolling. Look at the numbers you posted for Podz, what a joke. Cherry picking incremental improvements that is probably just variation, and half of them are for things that don’t matter.

He takes 1.1 more threes, good for him, but drops from 38.5% to 31.9%. I guess that’s improvement somehow? He has no where near a high level impact and he only plays 25 MPG. What’s his competition for minutes? Moses Moody? Buddy Hield?

An “extremely high impact” is a star. Why was GSW so bad if Podz had such a great impact? Jimmy Butler is what I’d call extremely high impact

How exactly is he on his way to borderline stardom, his efficiency is horrible and he doesn’t even score that much. Gradey, Scottie and RJ are bashed for much less.

[Psubs]

The one concern I have with the Duke prospects is SOS, I want to see them perform well against 2-3 good teams in tourney. Duke's sched has kinda been lightweight and it makes me wonder what Flagg's #s would look like if he had played on an SEC team.

Condon has peformed even better against top teams, knocking off then #1 Tennessee and #1 Auburn (Johni Broome) and now #7 Crimson Tide in Alabama.

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

The one concern I have with the Duke prospects is SOS, I want to see them perform well against 2-3 good teams in tourney. Duke's sched has kinda been lightweight and it makes me wonder what Flagg's #s would look like if he had played on an SEC team.

I believe BPM does adjust somewhat for SOS, but the main thing is how much have all these guys helped each get easier looks and better indicators? Kneuppel (and Sion)as 3pt shooters, Proctor as a playmaking guard who can also shoot. Malauch as a lob threat and Flagg as a do it all everything. 8 of their 9 rotational guys having BPMs over 7, what would they look like on South Carolina?

I think Duke will win the tourney despite having the SEC being insanely good this year.

Yeah I'm praying no because I bet Auburn, Duke and Alabama preseason equal amounts and got Auburn at +3000 while Duke was at +1000. I'm probably going to take Duke as winner in a few buy-in pools to further hedge Auburn with.

'• 96% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-21 KenPom offense pre-tournament.
• 91% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-31 KenPom defense pre-tournament.'

Also the teams that qualify for this right now are:

Tennessee
Clemson
Arizona
Wisconsin
Houston
Texas Tech
Florida
Duke
Auburn

Basically I'd weigh it like this:

Auburn 32% (met important query that predicts winner 12 of last 13 titles in addition to above query)
Duke 32% (met important query that predicts winner 12 of last 13 titles in addition to above query)
Tennessee 16% (met important query that predicts winner 12 of last 13 titles in addition to above query)
One of Houston, Florida, Gonzaga, Alabama - in that order - 15%
Rest of field 5%

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

Borderline 10 PPG all-star with a negative BPM who loses with multiple HoFers on his team and needs a 40 year old Jimmy Butler to save him. Ok

Butler goes out with back spasms for one game and this bum loses to Philly of all teams going 2 for 8 with 5 points and a team worst -16. Wow, that’s some all-star level stuff

You know last year I thought you made a number of intelligent comments and posts but it's as if someone hacked your account recently and you're an entirely different poster. You're going off on a rant about him not being an all-star right now as if many 2nd year players accomplish that and ignoring entirely the fact I said he's on a trajectory to becoming a borderline all-star. Very irresponsible reply by you.

Have u looked in the mirror. You’ve got to be trolling. Look at the numbers you posted for Podz, what a joke. Cherry picking incremental improvements that is probably just variation, and half of them are for things that don’t matter.

He takes 1.1 more threes, good for him, but drops from 38.5% to 31.9%. I guess that’s improvement somehow? He has no where near a high level impact and he only plays 25 MPG. What’s his competition for minutes? Moses Moody? Buddy Hield?

An “extremely high impact” is a star. Why was GSW so bad if Podz had such a great impact? Jimmy Butler is what I’d call extremely high impact

How exactly is he on his way to borderline stardom, his efficiency is horrible and he doesn’t even score that much. Gradey, Scottie and RJ are bashed for much less.

3PT% is less predictive of shooting success than FT% and 3PAr and given his samples he is on the low end which will revert upwards. I stopped reading after that. Keep hating.

[REJECTEDBYCLARK]

Watch on YouTube

https://www.nbarapm.com/player/Brandin_Podziemski

Butler ON Podz OFF (49 mins) -14.1 NET
Podz ON Butler OFF (882 mins) +1.7 NET
Podz ON Butler ON (233 mins) +19.6 NET

If anything the early data shows that Podz actually raises Jimmy's ceiling and there is ZERO argument for the opposite

Podz last year when he was on-ball 7% less (relative to position):

98th percentile rebounder
90th percentile forced turnovers
81st percentile assisted pts per game
92nd percentile net rating
(this year TOV% is in 83rd percentile)

What I can tell you is that having VJ t5 you better be sure he has the bag and that the dribble J will come otherwise he might just end up like "bum podz" being strong as a rebounder, turnover forcer, passer and ball protector with a middling TS% and relegated to a "bum" role player. As far as I'm concerned they come from the same player tree and both possess paths to improving their offensive output.

[Dalek]

I may have to walk-back on my thoughts about Rasheer Fleming. He has such an NBA ready game. I originally saw him as more of a play finisher which is shooting catch and shoot and dunks, but he does show some ability to drive the ball and some post footwork to score.

Watch on YouTube

Frame and motor reminds me a lot of Naz Reid which is a great outcome for any draft pick. Look at LSU Reid and they seem pretty similar. They both have a hard-nosed demeanor. Fleming might be our enforcer.

Watch on YouTube

[Psubs]

I may have to walk-back on my thoughts about Rasheer Fleming. He has such an NBA ready game. I originally saw him as more of a play finisher which is shooting catch and shoot and dunks, but he does show some ability to drive the ball and some post footwork to score.

Watch on YouTube

Frame and motor reminds me a lot of Naz Reid which is a great outcome for any draft pick. Look at LSU Reid and they seem pretty similar. They both have a hard-nosed demeanor. Fleming might be our enforcer.

Watch on YouTube

Naz Reid went undrafted! Fleming's frame is already solid but could get even stronger.

A 6'9 guy with a 7'5 wingspan that can hold a handstand for almost a minute is RIDICULOUS!!! Just think about how high his centre of gravity would be.

His last month or so he's shooting over 80% FT's and he's been so consistent the last 4-5 games.

Draft Fleming, Condon and steal away Ty Jerome for the MLE, then why can't this team be just as good as Cleveland?

[Thaddy]

If that happens we would get Johnson to drop to us. That's pretty damn good man. I have Johnson as an elite scorer in the NBA he's one of the best pull up shooters in college right now and ahead of the top 3 in that part of the game.

I'm not entirely sold on Tre Johnson, especially as a prospect who could replace or complement what we already have with our current trio of young wings (Gradey, Ja'Kobe, Ochai).

I would probably trade Dick with RJ to dump his contract and get another lottery pick in this draft. We need a stretch big, we saw how effective Olynyk was. Despite being a slow big that can't jump or provide rim defense he had good on/off numbers in Toronto.