2025 Draft Thread - Part 2

[Rafael122]

Spurs aren't trading #2 unless its for Giannis or a superstar of that ilk.

[payitforward]

Would you trade 6 and 18 for 2? I'm assuming many of you will say 'no'.

I would definitely say yes. Harper has real potential to be a star.

Another option -would you trade 6 and Bilal for 2? Reuniting the French kiddos could be intriguing to SA. Pretty steep price for 2, but I'd probably do it.

I was listening to The Ringer Draft podcast and one of the hosts was talking about Toronto trading up to 2 because of (1) the host is a Raptors fan, (2) the obvious need for Toronto and (3) their history of trading with San Antonio and it got me thinking about the Bilal-Wemby connection and how much sense it would make for Washington to try to get Harper.

My guess is Bilal does not carry enough value to justify that swap, but Washington could include other assets in addition to #6 and Bilal if they like Harper enough. I don't REALLY think the Spurs will go that direction but I could see where getting #6, Bilal, and a future Wizards pick or two would be enticing.

IF san antonio would trade at all, Bilal & 6 suffices for 2.

[BearlyBallin]

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[The Consiglieri]

Honestly, I'd do it. Who gives a ---- about pick 6, like, at all. If you can give it to a team that will be bottom 8ish next year, it will up our lottery balls dramatically in a draft that appears 4 deep or at worst 3 deep in studs, instead of this years 2 deep, plus 2 question marks.

I have less than zero interest in the sixth pick.

Here’s why you should give a ———about pick 6.

Lillard a 6th pick.
Jamal Murray a 7th pick.
Julius Randle a 7th pick.
Deni a 9th pick.
SGA an 11th pick.
Haliburton a 12th pick.
Jalen Williams a 12th pick.
Devin Booker a 13th pick.
Donovan Mitchell a 13th pick.
Leonard a 15th pick.
Giannis a 15th pick.
Sengun a 16th pick.
Brunson a 33rd pick.

Also, just look at the 8 remaining teams.
Many of them have been built without a lot
of #1#1s (off the top of my head)

NYK has 1 (KAT) and he hasn't been their best player
BOS has several high picks but probably won't make
the ECFs.
IND, no high lottery picks
CLE, also no high lottery picks (about to be eliminated if not already)

DEN, Gordon is probably their highest pick
MIN has ANTMan. And Conley who a million years ago
was maybe a 3rd overall pick
GSW have Curry, famously a 7th overall pick
OKC has Holmgren 2nd overall

That's not a lot of high picks left in the playoffs.

So yeah, DAL getting Flagg has a bad smell.
We got screwed but all hope is not lost forever.

Good mgmt has been shown to overcome other
disadvantages.

I'm torn when I think about this, I don't think using those things as a model because most of these things are luck, yes a lot of luck, but still luck, and we are team that is NEVER lucky.

NY is only here because Nico managed to demolish his own player capital to enrich both NY, and LA, almost feels like a double agent sent in by the NBA to save the Knicks and Lakers doesn't it?

Indiana is a more typical Indiana build, having taken Sacramento, another cursed franchise, to the woodshed for Haliburton (not Nico level bad, but not great either).

Min won a lottery in a draft with only 1 perceived top end prospect, and snagged him. They are nothing w/o winning the 2020 lottery win.

GSW needed both us and Minny to be so stupid, as to leave Curry to fall into their laps, and that wasn't all, they needed Curry's horrendously unreliable ankles, to be surgically repaired or rehabbed in such a way that he could handle an NBA vets career, they were.

OKC needed the Clippers to make what in terms of overall capital surrendered, would become the worst trade in NBA History (maybe the Doncic trade is worse, but it's 1 player for 1 player, it's not 1 inferior player on a fat contract, for 1 superior player FAR YOUNGER, on a much cheaper contract, along with a billion future picks).....

The key thing here is that most of these stories listed turn on colossal management mistakes that are far more rare these days unless you have Nico panicked and talking to you.

The simplest and clearest path forward is simple, and the scenarios most likely, are scarily simple and probably predictable.....

#1 We land a superstar from the 2026, or 2026 classes, or discover we actually drafted said player in '23-'25, which seems highly unlikely.

#2 Ownership grows tired of 55-65 loss seasons, and pulls a Snyder, going back to the short cuts that plagued us 1980-2023.

I have to admit I'm petrified of #2 happening, I'd put the odds of it happening by 2027 to 2028 at 25-40% now simply because we have not (for now) landed a transformative anything from the '23-'24 classes, and the usual lottery punishment has made us landing one in '26, probably at best a 5-15% possibility or worse. While we should be a bottom 3 side in '25-'26, its not guaranteed, and even if we were, in a draft with 3 tier 1 superstars, and one wild card potential superstar in Ament who the scouts can agree on, we basically have about a 40% chance, for now, of landing one of the big 3, and a 50% chance of landing one or Ament....we saw how that worked this year....and all of that is before we even play with the odds of the tier 1 prospects actually busting/disappointing/suffering career ending injuries early etc.

I'm very happy w/what the front office is doing, but I also know our owner is a fool, and a good chunk of the fan base our foolish, goof balls who don't understand why its critical to rebuild this way, and would much prefer going back to the mediocrity and the delusions that 1980-2023 entailed, to the sheer misery that is 60-70 loss seasons like the last few years. So the possibility that they start trading futures assets for solid starters, and eschew going after superstars remains a possibility.

We'll see....we'll know a lot more a year from now, and hopefully having potentially more lottery balls from multiple teams, if things play out right, can help us finally have some luck, for once, this century.

[The Consiglieri]

That the Lottery system is designed to prevent teams from tanking is a lie. The Jazz still tanked hard. The Sixers tanked hard. The Wiz have a multi year tanking strategy, Teams have no choice but to keep tanking. The incentive remains.

The lottery system is designed so the NBA can engineer generational talent to the preferred teams of their choosing. It's a multi multi billion dollar business. it is just reality.

Dallas goes to the NBA finals and wins the draft lottery the next year. How is that system fair?

Jim Rome had a good segment on this yesterday on the top of the show, and it's good advice to the ownership of Charlotte, Utah, DC, New Orleans etc. It's basically to junk the lottery, period. The Draft and the lotteries objectives historically, and post flattening have been to:

1. Prevent tanking
2. Reward struggling teams, in the quick sand of failure, and their suffering fans with hope in the form of elite prospects.

It does neither. It's actually accelerated tanking, as all the teams that would typically tank, a year ago, tried to do so, the instances in which it wasn't achieved (Brooklyn, Portland etc), were due to player performance and team performance and coaching simply achieving higher than expected results, and even w/those improvements, all of those teams remained mired in the lottery and were actually punished more severely than...
#1 the obviously tanking teams (Washington, Utah, Charlotte, New Orleans) as well as the new problem not perceived by these idiots when they flattened the odds six years ago....

#2 the fact that competing playoff teams from prior years smashed by injury, or by random misfortune/suspensions etc, would also join the tankathon pre and post deadline, simply to position themselves to take advantage of the flattened odds.

This is how an Atlanta team that was a playoff team, and a Dallas team, that their GM suicide bombed metaphorically speaking, and a Philly team, that was self-owned by their idiotic Embiid extension, could jump to the top of the draft, and how San Antonio, a playoff contender with Wemby, could deliberately tank down the stretch post Wemby injury.

The reality is, the lottery does not prevent tanking, has actually accelerated tanking, and that it actually has punished, far more severely, poor teams, unlucky in such lotteries: New Orleans post Zion luck, Charlotte and Washington-never having luck, Toronto-post Kawahi departure, and Utah, post sell off, have all collapsed. Some teams were helped, but not deliberately, it was simply achieved through tanking+lottery luck (Detroit, Orlando, Memphis, San Antonio, all getting helping hand through tanking deliberately, and lottery luck did get lifted, but the teams that didn't get such luck, remain in the midst of a half decade to decade or more long bottom of the barrell journey).

So why are we keeping this system, and why aren't the owners of Utah, and more specifically, Washington, Charlotte, and New Orleans, fighting to have it scrapped, as it clearly does not work: having only assisted winning teams that dipped briefly like Atlanta, Dallas and San Antonio, and a handful of bad teams, that finally got some luck (like Detroit, and Orlando, who merely climbed from apocalyptically bad, to mediocre and playoff punching bag worthy)....

But do I think Leonsis will do anything? Of course not. He's a coward, and system, one is hard pressed to imagine wasn't deliberately engineered more to help flagship teams that had an offseason, than to stop tanking, will simply persist.

[The Consiglieri]

Big Cajones! The Spanish word for testicles.

Kahuna is a mystical, shaman like figure in traditional Hawaiian culture, and it is offensive to them when we say, for example, someone is a big Kahuna. Though I doubt we have many Hawaiians on this board…

I've lived in Oahu for 25 years. I've heard big black kahuna before jokingly from my sister.

We may be neighbors. I'm moving to Honolulu this summer. If you don't mind, maybe I can reach out for advice/suggestions at some point.

So jealous of you guys. I should be happy, I live 40 minutes from Lake Tahoe, but I HATE the high desert out here, saving grace is I live in one of the few places here, that is actually beautiful, but man do I miss things actually growing naturally, rather than just tumbleweeds, desert, pine and mountains which is what is the norm out here (think Burning Man Black Rock Desert, but with more Pine Trees).

[The Consiglieri]

Morning thoughts:

The implosion of Queen could have been great news for Sorber, but no one knows how the foot injury is going to work out.

A couple of videos mentioned that Fears is moving up the boards, one of: Fears, Johnson, Bailey, or Maluach may be available to us, dunno if that eases the kick in the gut somewhat.

Fears and Maluach are the only guys I really tend to think have explosive ceiling potential, with Johnson, it's not so much that I know he doesn't, but so many people are so concerned with certain parts of his game, that its hard for me to think he won't be a liablity in certain ways that permanently blunt how high his ceiling can go (kind of like how concerned I was about Queen, before the bad combine, being permanently blunted by the athletic/pace issues along with the disinterested to crap defense)....

With this draft I'd be thinking in one of two ways:
#1 targeting the few talents that have explosively high ceilings, and admittedly crushingly low floors.

#2 Simply trading down and out, and trying for a grand slam or two high upside dart throws, while acquiring more '26 draft capital.

I lean towards #2 because historically in drafts like this, while there are hidden stars (Haliburton level) or superstars (Giannis/SGA level), nobody has a clue who they are and it's never really obvious which guys is gonna be a baltche, and which guy is gonna turn into Lillliard or Curry or Giannis or SGA etc, which makes it more than likely a fools errand to pretend you are that smart guy who can sniff out every all star hidden gem improperly scouted (or whose due for a growth spurt, and has exactly the right supersauce between the ears to maximize said potential).

I'd just rather stack more balls for the '26 draft, than pretend we are the one genius front office that can peel off the next SGA or Giannis between slot 6 and 30 (if there even is one).

[closg00]

I find all these trade scenarios with Bilal to be amusing, he is not an enticement to secure a trade IMO.

[The Consiglieri]

Would you trade 6 and 18 for 2? I'm assuming many of you will say 'no'.

1000% yes, but there's no way in hell San Antonio would do that.

[dckingsfan]

I find all these trade scenarios with Bilal to be amusing, he is not an enticement to secure a trade IMO.

SA is in a win now mode. Bilal is still a hopefully will develop piece. SA is going to be in on the Giannis sweepstakes. So, if it were going to happen then the question is, "what does Milwaukee want".

[dckingsfan]

Morning thoughts:

The implosion of Queen could have been great news for Sorber, but no one knows how the foot injury is going to work out.

A couple of videos mentioned that Fears is moving up the boards, one of: Fears, Johnson, Bailey, or Maluach may be available to us, dunno if that eases the kick in the gut somewhat.

I missed that - where?

[Jay81]

Spurs aren't trading #2 unless its for Giannis or a superstar of that ilk.

Six Bilal and 18 would not be close to getting it done

[closg00]

Morning thoughts:

The implosion of Queen could have been great news for Sorber, but no one knows how the foot injury is going to work out.

A couple of videos mentioned that Fears is moving up the boards, one of: Fears, Johnson, Bailey, or Maluach may be available to us, dunno if that eases the kick in the gut somewhat.

I missed that - where?

Ah- man, check a couple of pages back, Queen had historically bad combine scores, lane agility, etc, really bad stuff.

[The Consiglieri]

Morning thoughts:

The implosion of Queen could have been great news for Sorber, but no one knows how the foot injury is going to work out.

A couple of videos mentioned that Fears is moving up the boards, one of: Fears, Johnson, Bailey, or Maluach will be available to us, dunno if that eases the kick in the gut somewhat.

I think Bailey goes top 4. But, you’re right, knowing that one of Fears, Johnson, Maluach (or Sorber) will be available does ease the pain…somewhat.

Sorber might be a stretch at 6. But I like the skill level and IQ that I saw at G’Town…and when you put that together with those impressive measurables from the combine he might just be worth the 6th pick.

A lot will depend on his individual workouts.

What a difference one word makes, I edited my comment from will be available, to may be available.
Unfortunately for Sorber, he won’t be doing pre-draft workouts because his foot.

6 is just too high for me, every projection I've seen has been around 10th-22nd or thereabouts, sometimes a touch lower. But I can't deny with Queen's stock taking multiple torpedo's to it's bow, one can't help but wonder if injured foot or not, Sorber might be climbing w/that news. Not sure. I just would rather move out of the draft entirely than do that. I'm okay with sliding down a bit for him, or other dudes (as usual, I'm enticed by the lottery ticket fantasy that is betting on the upside of the French dudes projected to go in the teens), but if its Sorber at 6 or no Sorber, I'd just go with no Sorber. Already got the dreaded foot problems before he even plays an NBA game, and I need to take him 5-15 slots ahead of where he's projected? No thanks.

[dckingsfan]

Morning thoughts:

The implosion of Queen could have been great news for Sorber, but no one knows how the foot injury is going to work out.

A couple of videos mentioned that Fears is moving up the boards, one of: Fears, Johnson, Bailey, or Maluach may be available to us, dunno if that eases the kick in the gut somewhat.

I missed that - where?

Ah- man, check a couple of pages back, Queen had historically bad combine scores, lane agility, etc, really bad stuff.

Thanks! I see it now. Ouch.

[The Consiglieri]

Nolan Traore last 10 games: 20.2 points 7.4 assists 4.0 turnovers 1.2 steals 57.2% TS 41% from 3.

In the Pro-A league in a high usage role on a bad team at 18 years old. As impressive a stretch of games as anyone in the class IMO.

He is absolutely my target at #18 and could be convinced to move up for him.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the mocks are way off on Traore/haven’t adjusted to his late season surge.

Doubt he’ll be available outside of the lottery. Maybe goes in the Carrington/Topic range?? 10-14ish?

Would be cool if NBA prospect projections had valuation stuff like transfermarkt for soccer. You could trace where guys were valued over time. Instead I have to go from fuzzy memories, but I'm fairly certain Nolan Traore was rated inside the top 10, maybe even top 6 or 7 last summer, and fell to the bottom of the first round in a lot of projections circa January and February before climbing again the past month or two. I don't think any guy experienced as much volatility other than maybe that Hugo Gonzalez kid from Spain who tumbled a good 15-25 slots in aggregated mocks between 2024 and May 2025.

[machu46]

He is absolutely my target at #18 and could be convinced to move up for him.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the mocks are way off on Traore/haven’t adjusted to his late season surge.

Doubt he’ll be available outside of the lottery. Maybe goes in the Carrington/Topic range?? 10-14ish?

Would be cool if NBA prospect projections had valuation stuff like transfermarkt for soccer. You could trace where guys were valued over time. Instead I have to go from fuzzy memories, but I'm fairly certain Nolan Traore was rated inside the top 10, maybe even top 6 or 7 last summer, and fell to the bottom of the first round in a lot of projections circa January and February before climbing again the past month or two. I don't think any guy experienced as much volatility other than maybe that Hugo Gonzalez kid from Spain who tumbled a good 15-25 slots in aggregated mocks between 2024 and May 2025.

DraftExpress used to have this back in the day but alas...

Anyways, Traore was a projected top 5 pick at the beginning of the year according to ESPN.

[machu46]

Spurs aren't trading #2 unless its for Giannis or a superstar of that ilk.

Six Bilal and 18 would not be close to getting it done

Yeah, my guess would be it would require Bilal, #6, and at least one future Wizards 1st round pick to get #2.

[J-Ves]

He is absolutely my target at #18 and could be convinced to move up for him.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the mocks are way off on Traore/haven’t adjusted to his late season surge.

Doubt he’ll be available outside of the lottery. Maybe goes in the Carrington/Topic range?? 10-14ish?

Would be cool if NBA prospect projections had valuation stuff like transfermarkt for soccer. You could trace where guys were valued over time. Instead I have to go from fuzzy memories, but I'm fairly certain Nolan Traore was rated inside the top 10, maybe even top 6 or 7 last summer, and fell to the bottom of the first round in a lot of projections circa January and February before climbing again the past month or two. I don't think any guy experienced as much volatility other than maybe that Hugo Gonzalez kid from Spain who tumbled a good 15-25 slots in aggregated mocks between 2024 and May 2025.

Yeah he was considered the 5th best prospect after Flagg Harper, Ace, and VJ before the season started. Won’t be that surprised if he manages to make it back to the top once the draft rolls around

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Big Cajones! The Spanish word for testicles.

Kahuna is a mystical, shaman like figure in traditional Hawaiian culture, and it is offensive to them when we say, for example, someone is a big Kahuna. Though I doubt we have many Hawaiians on this board…

I've lived in Oahu for 25 years. I've heard big black kahuna before jokingly from my sister.

We may be neighbors. I'm moving to Honolulu this summer. If you don't mind, maybe I can reach out for advice/suggestions at some point.

Sure.

PM me.