2025 NBA Draft Feedback

Updating My Priors in Response to New Information

In response to the market feedback of transactions around the draft, the actual draft order, and the subsequent flurry of UDFA transactions, here is how I would update my thoughts on NBA team front office strategies and my draft board.

Team Strategies

Pelicans

The totality of the Pelicans’ pre-draft and within-draft decision-making left me aghast. To recap:

• During the NBA Finals, the Pelicans acquired pick 23 from the Pacers and the draft rights to Mojave King in exchange for the Pacers’ 2026 1st-round pick.¹ That signaled that the Pelicans 1) had an abnormally favorable evaluation of the 2025 draft class, and/or 2) didn’t think of extracting a premium from the Pacers in exchange for the Pacers unlocking the flexibility to make more of their picks trade-able, and/or 3) didn’t think of extracting a premium from the Pacers in exchange for the Pacers unlocking 2025-26 tanking flexibility and/or 4) didn’t think of the adverse selection issues when at that time the Pacers were sitting on injury information about superstar Tyrese Haliburton that the rest of the league did not have.

• Pre-draft, the Pelicans got better in 2025-26 by getting off short-term money and taking on longer-term money by trading CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk, and a future 2nd-round pick for Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey, and the 40th overall pick in the 2025 draft. This is a move more suited to a win-now 2025-26 team than a tanking 2025-26 team.

• Pre-draft, they seemed to telegraph their interest in Jeremiah Fears, Derik Queen, and/or Khaman Maluach,² allowing other teams to prepare to extort them in a trade-up scenario.³ It’s hard to consistently discern real signal from “smokescreen season,” but a variety of outlets had pointed to those players.

• At 7, they took a wide-distribution player in Jeremiah Fears who has upside but is expected to be very bad as a rookie, a move more suited to a tanking 2025-26 team than a win-now 2025-26 team.

• They also traded up from 23 to 13 in order to pick Derik Queen, another wide-distribution player expected to be very bad as a rookie. This is also a move more suited to a tanking 2025-26 team than a win-now 2025-26 team.

• In the trade-up they gave up their unprotected 2026 1st-round pick — the more favorable of their own pick and the Bucks’ pick. This is a burn-the-boats win-now move and almost completely nullifies the viability of tanking in 2025-26. Any way you slice it, the Pelicans gave up a jaw-dropping amount of value in order to take Queen. Zach Kram’s draft value chart has the difference in 13 and 23 equivalent to the 28th pick. As Zach put it: “In other words, as long as the Pelicans and Bucks aren’t 2 of the 3 best teams in the NBA next season, the Hawks won this trade based on pick value.”⁴

• The totality of their moves resulted in coming out of the draft as a projected non-playoff team, and even a non-play-in team⁵ in a very competitive Western Conference. And they still have significant 2025-26 injury downside risk with Zion Williamson as their best player.⁶

Non-Pelicans Teams Picking 3-12

This group includes: Sixers, Hornets, Jazz, Wizards, Nets, Raptors, Suns, Blazers/Grizzlies,⁷ and Bulls.

Given the significant downside risks to the 2025-26 Pelicans, the possibility of a Giannis trade, and the apparent strength of the top of the 2026 draft, one could have made a reasonable argument pre-draft that, if you ignore time-discounting of value now vs. next year, the Pelicans 2026 1st-round pick was actually even more valuable than the 7th overall pick in the 2025 draft!

Given the Pelicans’ apparent irrational exuberance for their guys, I’d love to know what trade-down offers were potentially available at picks 3, 4, and even 5. In addition to telegraphing their interest in Queen, it was widely speculated that the Pelicans were interested in Jeremiah Fears and/or Khaman Maluach. Fears, in particular, was often mocked to Utah at 5. If the Pelicans liked Fears even more than they liked Queen, it’s plausible that they may have traded a similarly outrageous package if they thought there was a credible threat of a team sniping Fears ahead of them. On the other hand, perhaps they valued Fears and Queen nearly equivalently, and would not have traded as much value simply to take one instead of the other.

But if that offer existed to trade up to 13 to take Queen, it’s fair to wonder whether every other team in the late lottery did their potential trade-down due diligence. On the other hand, given the fact that the Hawks had recently hired former longtime-Pelicans exec Bryson Graham, perhaps the Hawks were the only team uniquely positioned to take advantage of the Pelicans. And given the logical inconsistency of the Pelicans’ transactions with each other, perhaps the offers only became so obscene under time pressure as Queen’s expected draft range was approaching.

To a certain extent, all of the above strategic analysis is only available after the fact given we now know the lengths the Pelicans would go to get their guy in Queen. So, in a sense, I’m “resulting,” which is not a good way to evaluate and improve decision-making. But I do still wonder: did these teams properly consider the potential trade-down opportunities to the very end? Or did they get locked into the player they would take at their pick assuming the draft went largely as expected⁸ before they were on the clock, thereby suffering from the endowment effect? Teams should have a price for any player or pick. Given we’ve seen trades as surprising as the Derik Queen trade, I would argue that it’s an abdication of responsibility to be content picking a good prospect with a valuable pick, as opposed to attempting to harvest even more value.

Hornets and Suns

The Hornets’ eagerness to move Mark Williams suggests something might be off with him physically, especially given he failed his physical after being traded to the Lakers, resulting in that trade being rescinded. This raises further questions about why the Suns were so keen to acquire him.

It’s impossible to know who would be available at 29 at the time of the trade. And the Suns may not share my optimistic evaluation of Ryan Kalkbrenner. But at the time of the trade it’s fair to wonder: was there a better shot of Kalkbrenner being available at 29 or of Mark Williams being healthy for the rest of his contract? One can make the argument that for a similar role Kalkbrenner might have provided better value on a better contract without the glaring adverse selection issues that come with trading for Mark Williams. Ironically, the Hornets ended up taking Kalkbrenner at 34.

Jazz

The Jazz took Ace Bailey, a young, raw wide-distribution projection at 5 who I am much lower on than consensus:

But even if you think I’m incorrect on my Ace Bailey analysis, the subsequent Jazz moves were still puzzling, as they traded up from 21 to 18 at a cost of 43, a 2031 2nd-round pick, and a 2032 2nd-round pick in order to draft Walter Clayton Jr. and took 24.2 year-old John Tonje at 53, a player who was originally on my “do not draft” list, which could be loosely interpreted as ranking 86-100 on my board.

Even if you disagree with my evaluation of Tonje, taking the 24.2 year old and, especially, using the draft capital in the seemingly very expensive Clayton trade-up⁹ was puzzling to me. Clayton is an older player who projects to have a tighter distribution of outcomes, better suited to a team closer to their competitive window than the Jazz, whose roster remains mostly raw and/or under-talented outside of Lauri Markkanen and Walker Kessler, who have been rumored to be potentially on the move this offseason.

Nets

In general, across sports most people tend to see front office executive draft trends where none exist. For example:

• “GM A loves taking high school players in the first round of the MLB Draft” (when GM A has a sample of two 1st-round picks in two drafts)

• “Front office X loves taking international players in the NBA Draft” (when front office X has taken three international players out of four picks, where two of them were draft-and-stash picks toward the end of the second round)

In general, which players a team actually ends up drafting is a tiny fraction of their overall draft board, so leaning hard into small sample results can lead people astray about to a front office’s evaluation process (and about evaluating the front office itself). But every so often there could be a real trend, and with five 1st-round picks in one draft, the Nets provided a potential opportunity for discernment.

Instead of packaging some of their picks to move up in the draft, as was widely rumored pre-draft, and/or trade into the future, the Nets used four of their five 1st round picks on on-ball ball-handler/passers with questionable shooting.¹⁰¹¹

Since the start of this draft cycle, the Nets knew they would have multiple 1st round picks, including a lottery pick as the result of a tanking season. It follows that it would then be reasonable to pour more resources into the draft this cycle relative to other draft cycles. But I wonder if doing so resulted in 1) an overoptimistic view of the players throughout this draft class and/or 2) overconfidence in what the Nets value in prospects relative to the market.

On the other hand, aside from the polarizing Egor Demin,¹² none of their picks were reaches relative to the consensus board, so from my outside view it’s hard to have that much confidence in my Nets hypothesis. And one could argue that the Nets draft actually displays an admirable amount of humility by drafting multiple bets for a similar role instead of assuming that each player will definitely pan out and block the others. Finally, setting up their 2025-26 roster to be very heavy on rookies who have skillsets that have a long way to go on the aging curve clearly signals a 2025-26 tanking season, which strategically maps nicely to the apparent strength of the 2026 draft.

Draft Market Feedback

There is real signal in the actual draft order and, accordingly, I should adjust my own projections and reflect upon how my analysis differed from 30 groups of people who devote a substantial portion of their full-time job to getting draft analysis correct.

However, I should be cautious about over-adjusting based on second-round market feedback, given the roster and contract dynamics at play. In the second round players are not necessarily picked solely for their NBA prospects. Rather, there is also correctly consideration for whether a player/agent is willing to take a Two-Way contract, preserving an NBA roster spot, or willing to be stashed overseas, preserving both an NBA roster spot and a Two-Way spot. But since my pre-draft confidence was generally lower in the second round range anyway, perhaps adjustments balance out.

I should also adjust more strongly based on a player falling as opposed to a player getting picked much earlier than was expected. The logic behind this is basically that a player who falls was passed over by many different teams vs. a player who was taken much higher than expected only requires one team to be off-market.¹³ This follows from the Wisdom of Crowds logic I discussed in “Sources of Edge in the NBA Draft Market”:

However, I believe there can be slight exceptions to this rule, such as if a team trades up for a player in order to get ahead of another team who shared a similar evaluation.

Negative Market Feedback

• The most significant adjustment I should make is on Jase Richardson, whom I ranked at 7. In retrospect, I should have weighted the Green Room invitations — extended by the NBA league office via crowdsourcing team opinions of who is most likely to get picked in the first round — more heavily, as Jase wasn’t among the 24 invitees. Given my initial low-confidence take, a more substantial regression towards the market would have made more sense on Jase, whom I should have ranked one more tier down.

• I should also move Rasheer Fleming down from 11. Although he slipped out of the first round, a bidding war at pick 31¹⁴ after teams had ample time to reconsider implies he might have slipped through the cracks as opposed to teams actively avoiding him. So I probably shouldn’t overdo it with too much downward adjustment on Fleming.

• I had high pre-draft confidence in my Ryan Kalkbrenner analysis, so I’m not going to bump him down too much, despite falling to 34.

• I should probably bump Yanic Niederhauser up a little bit after he got picked at 30, but as I mentioned above, I think I should adjust less based on a player going earlier than expected relative to a player going later than expected.

• I also got negative market feedback on Mark Sears with him going undrafted (albeit getting a two-way contract from the Bucks shortly after the draft).

• The Grizzlies under Zach Kleiman with their group of former The Stepien scouts have a history of drafting above expectation. Given they picked Jahmai Mashack, albeit with the 59th and final pick of the draft, I probably incorrectly overlooked him. Mashack was not even in the group of seven players who I had as “just missed the cut” for my initial big board. Rather he was in my “not sure” group, which could loosely be interpreted as ranking 68-85 on my pre-draft board, though my knowledge of many players that deep was near-nonexistent.

Unclear Market Feedback

• From the outside, it seemed like the Jazz trade-up for Walter Clayton Jr. was meant to leapfrog Miami, to whom Clayton was frequently mocked at 20. So I think this serves as moderately positive feedback on my Clayton take.

• My pre-draft stance on Will Richard and Alijah Martin might have been a tad too strong, but I still think it was likely directionally accurate with Will Richard getting picked at 56. The roster/contract considerations of the second round renders the exact order of the mid/late second round less relevant than whether a player was drafted at all and what contract the player receives.

• Hunter Sallis was the highest-ranked player on my pre-draft board who went undrafted, suggesting negative market feedback, but my analysis on him didn’t deviate much from the consensus board. He also received an immediate Two-Way contract from the Sixers. Daryl Morey has a long history of smart moves, including famously beating Sam Hinkie to signing Robert Covington as a UDFA during that one time Sam did a press conference instead of de-prioritizing the media in favor of relentlessly accumulating more value.¹⁵ All-in-all, I don’t think I should bump Sallis down too much.

• Payton Sandfort also went undrafted, but received an immediate Exhibit-10 from the Thunder. Sam Presti also has a long history of smart moves, especially in the draft. So I think this can serve as moderately positive feedback, even if it’s a bit less robust than if Sandfort had gotten drafted or received an immediate Two-Way as opposed to an immediate Exhibit-10.

• Unlike the “Draft Twitter BPM Army,” as I called it while messaging a former NBA team executive, I was not high on Dylan Cardwell pre-draft. Cardwell was on my “do not draft” list, which could be loosely interpreted as ranking 86-100 on my pre-draft board. In the post-Monte McNair era, a Kings Two-Way contract is not enough to crack my post-draft top 75, though it does bump Cardwell up a bit. My college model and my eye test have always been much more skeptical of the garbageman big than public impact metrics,¹⁶ though I will grant that he was likely at least a top 150-250 college basketball player in 2024-25 within his limited role.

• Yang Hansen at 16 was by far the biggest surprise of the draft, but given everyone else was also shocked at the pick, I don’t think I should adjust upward on him that drastically.

• Sam Presti and the Thunder traded out of 24 instead of picking a player to stash overseas, which could be interpreted as a signal that this international class is not as good as consensus was projecting, at least for the potential stashes.

• The Celtics, another smart front office, drafted Hugo Gonzalez at 28. Hugo’s Real Madrid contract is up in 2025, indicating he will come over right away as opposed to being stashed. So I think the Celtics taking him at 28 should be a signal to bump him up and is not really in conflict with the Thunder 24 trade-out signal.

Positive Market Feedback

• As I mentioned above, the Zach Kleiman Grizzlies regime has a history of draft over-performance, so the fact that they traded a sizable haul¹⁷ to take Cedric Coward should serve as positive market feedback on my optimistic Coward take, despite him being a unique case who ends up projecting poorly in draft models.

• Despite the roster crunch on their hands, Sam Presti and the Thunder chose to pick Thomas Sorber at 15 instead of trading out of the pick. This ended up in the Thunder having to give up on Dillon Jones and give up a 2nd round pick to get off of his contract. All of the above serves as positive market feedback on my optimistic Sorber take:

• The Thunder also took my biggest sleeper, Brooks Barnhizer, despite their roster crunch.¹⁸ So I should bump Barnhizer up relative to my pre-draft analysis.

• My other second round sleepers, Javon Small (Grizzlies), Amari Williams (Celtics), and Max Shulga (Celtics) all got picked by smart front offices, serving as positive market feedback.

Updated Big Board

1. Pre-NBA Finals trade, the pick originally had top-4 protection, so effectively the Pacers traded for their pick back if it fell 5-30.

2. Jake Fischer wrote, “I believe the Pelicans, at No. 7, are the start of Derik Queen's range, although New Orleans is widely expected to grab Maluach if he makes it that far down the board.”

3. And longtime Pelicans exec Bryson Graham also recently moved from the Pelicans to the Hawks, potentially carrying some knowledge of Pelicans decision-makers’ draft thoughts with him.

4. The devil is in the details of pick value charts, and when I look at the methodology behind Kevin Pelton’s draft chart, on top of which Zach Kram’s pick swap analysis is based, I have some disagreements near the upper third of the draft, especially at the very top, based on 1) actual trade market behavior, 2) choice of all-in-one value metric, 3) salary cap handling, and 4) consideration of regular season vs. postseason value. Nevertheless, Kevin’s methodology is generally sensible and those methodological disagreements are less pronounced the lower we get into the draft.

5. Tied for 11th-best title odds among Western Conference teams in 2025-26 at +20000, according to ESPNBet as of 6/28/2025. Title odds markets are 1) inefficient relative to pre-game spread/total/moneyline markets and 2) are more a reflection of upside than the more relevant distribution of outcomes. But the point generally holds that the Pelicans do not project particularly well.

6. In his NBA career Zion has played 214 out of a possible 492 regular season games.

7. The Grizzlies gave up a steep price of a 2028 1st from Orlando, a 2027 2nd from Atlanta, and a 2028 2nd from Sacramento to trade up with the Blazers from 16 to 11 in order to take Cedric Coward, so the Blazers are somewhat exempted from this analysis.

8. The Nets picking Egor Demin at 8 was a surprise, but aside from that the draft went largely as expected in the top 10.

9. To my knowledge, the details of the future picks and pick protection have not been reported yet.

10. And the other 1st-round pick was spent on a wing with questionable shooting.

11. Check out Jerry Engelmann’s Nets draft breakdown in this article.

12. Egor is polarizing among both the “Stats” and the “Scouts” crowd in Owen Phillips’ F5 Consensus Board.

13. Kevin Cole has an excellent explanation on “steals” vs. “reaches” in the NFL Draft.

14. According to Jake Fischer’s reporting

15. Legendary paragraph from Sam Hinkie’s resignation letter:

Robert is a mistake I rubbed my own nose in for over a year. The 2013 Draft was a flurry of activity for us—a handful of trades and selections in both the first and second rounds. We had more action following the draft as we tried to finalize our summer league team and get the myriad trade calls set up with the NBA. I could see this coming a few days before and we informed the media that this kind of approach might lead to an unusually late start for the post-draft press conference. Several of you were still there late that night. At about 1:00 a.m. I went downstairs to address an equally exhausted media on deadline from their editors. When I returned upstairs, the undrafted Robert Covington was gone, having agreed to play for another club’s summer league team, eventually making their regular season roster. He torched the D-League that year, haunting me all the while. When he became available 17 months later, we pounced. But I shudder, even now, at that (nearly) missed opportunity.

16. 11th in EvanMiya.com BPR! 14th among qualifiers in Torvik BPM! But any set of metrics for almost 6000 players will have some seemingly incorrect results, and my own player ratings are definitely not an exception to this rule.

17. A 2028 1st from Orlando, a 2027 2nd from Atlanta, and a 2028 2nd from Sacramento to trade up with the Blazers from 16 to 11

18. Barnhizer will be on a Two-Way contract.