2025 NBA Draft preview: Teams to watch, a Rutgers moment and more

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Every year, the discussion that precedes the NBA Draft focuses on the projected top picks. It makes sense. Those are the most prominent names, the largest draws, and, frankly, the players the media and fans know the most about.

However, every year, the NBA serves as a reminder that not all the attention is directed in the right places — the rest of the draft matters. The draft picks outside the lottery matter. The aperture for draft conversations needs to widen.

Some of the players who will be selected in the late lottery on Wednesday or in the late first or second round on Thursday will matter in the years to come. It is inevitable.

That is the paradox of the draft: the expected return in value of each pick declines the further you get into the draft, and some of the players who get picked deep into the first round will have better careers than the lottery picks. Generally, the NBA excels at selecting the right players early. However, it also struggles to ensure that these players are drafted at a high enough level.

Even when the right players go high, they don’t always provide those teams with the relationship to winning that they hoped for.

Take the top pick. The last No. 1 pick to win an NBA championship with the team that drafted him is Kyrie Irving, who went No. 1 to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011. He is one of just six No. 1 picks since 1980 to do that: Irving, LeBron James (2004, Cleveland Cavaliers), Tim Duncan (1997, San Antonio Spurs), David Robinson (1987, Spurs), Hakeem Olajuwon (1984, Houston Rockets) and James Worthy (1982, Los Angeles Lakers). Deandre Ayton, Dwight Howard, Kenyon Martin, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O’Neal, Patrick Ewing and Ralph Sampson are the others to get to the NBA Finals with their drafted team.

This season also demonstrated that teams are discovering exceptional players in all corners of the draft. The players who received MVP votes this season were chosen with the first, third, seventh, 13th, 15th, 33rd and 41st spots in the draft. A No. 1 pick hasn’t won the MVP award since James in 2013. As many Oklahoma City Thunder draft picks have won the MVP award over the last 12 years as former top-three picks.

In a historical performance, the value of each top pick can differ drastically. Since 2000, 13 No. 1 picks have made an All-NBA team, but only five No. 2 picks have, while 11 No. 3 picks have. As many second-round picks (10) have made an All-NBA team since 2000 as first-round picks chosen outside the lottery (11).

There is, of course, a question of whether this is a reflection of player selection or player development, but that’s a dilemma every team must face. They must not only select the player they believe is the best available to them, but also have an idea of how to improve him. It’s more complicated than it seems.

Rutgers in rare air

Rutgers might have two players — Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey — go in the top-five picks this year or even the top three. That’s a rare feat, let alone for a school with little basketball tradition.

Harper seems to be the consensus second-best player in this draft, while Bailey has a wider landing zone. Bailey could go as high as No. 3 or perhaps somewhere in the middle of the top 10. Bailey hasn’t had the cleanest pre-draft process, though there is some speculation among league sources that he is trying to get to the team he prefers. It will be interesting to see if he gets past Washington, which currently has the No. 6 pick, or New Orleans, which is at No. 7.

However, if Harper and Bailey do both go in the top five, it will be just the 13th time since 1970 that two players from the same school went that high. If they both go in the first three picks, that will be just the sixth time since 1970, although all of those occurrences have taken place since 2002. That would put Rutgers in the same sentence as Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and UConn in producing such a feat.

One of the questions dogging Bailey and Harper has been the performance of Rutgers this past season. Of the five previous schools that produced two top-three picks, two teams won a national title, two others earned No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament and the worst of them had a paltry 25 wins and was a No. 2 seed (2013-14 Kansas).

Rutgers went 15-17 and barely made the Big Ten tournament. Some around the league have asked how much of that should be attributed to Harper and Bailey, though the two were surrounded by a roster that was very short on Big Ten talent in a program that has struggled in the NIL era.

Senior citizens

This year, age is once again a prominent factor in the draft. Draftees are getting older and older, as many players opt to stay in college to capitalize on NIL dollars instead of entering the NBA, where their futures are less certain and less immediately lucrative.

That hasn’t hit the top of the draft as much. The top picks are still very young. If underclassmen are leaving college, they are likely headed to the top of the draft or the lottery. Still, the back end of the first round and the second round are now populated by older players who are seniors, typically 22 and 23 years old, or, as they are known for draft purposes, senior citizens.

The history of the draft has shown that selecting a player 22 or older on draft day does not typically yield a good return for that team.

This year, there are only a few contenders that fit those parameters. Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. is the only 22-year-old in the top 20 of The Athletic’s Big Board. Nique Clifford, a 23-year-old wing from Colorado State, is No. 19 on the consensus draft board, according to RookieScale. Cedric Coward will turn 22 in September but just missed the age cutoff, while Stanford big Maxime Raynaud, Marquette guard Kam Jones and Creighton center Ryan Kalkbrenner are all 22 or older but seem to be more likely to be late first-round picks or early second-rounders.

That will continue a growing draft trendline, where seniors have to wait until the second round for their chance to get selected, and very few, if any, are taken in the top 15 picks.

Sizing up

The top of the draft is increasingly no place to be for the little guys. From 2010 through 2014, 13 players, 6-3 or shorter, were picked in the top 10. Over the last five years, Rob Dillingham, Reed Sheppard, Scoot Henderson, and Davion Mitchell are the only players who have been small enough to get taken with one of the first 10 picks in their draft.

NBA teams are emphasizing size as they decide how to invest their most valuable draft capital.

Look at this season’s final four teams. The Indiana Pacers had only two players shorter than 6-5 on their roster, and only T.J. McConnell earned significant minutes in that series or throughout the entire season. The Thunder gave just 37 minutes in the regular season and playoffs to a player listed under 6-5, and all of those went to Adam Flagler, a wing on a two-way contract. Mike Conley Jr. and Dillingham were the only Minnesota Timberwolves below 6-3 to crack the top 11 in minutes per game. The Knicks gave significant minutes to Cameron Payne, Miles McBride and Jalen Brunson.

This might not bode well for Jeremiah Fears on Wednesday night. He has consistently been mocked in the top 10 ahead of the draft, but he measured 6-2 1/2 without shoes at the combine last month (with a 6-5 1/4 wingspan), which made him the 10th-shortest player measured in Chicago.

It could also make Michigan State guard Jase Richardson susceptible to a fall down the draft boards. He measured at just 6-0 1/2, which made him the fourth-shortest player at the combine, with a 6-6 wingspan.

While Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, who measures 6-3 without shoes, can serve as a model of a smaller guard who can still succeed as a two-way player, he was taken early in the second round, which might be a more comfortable place to select that archetype of a player.

Teams to watch

There has been speculation about whether there will be a trade high in the draft. Philadelphia, which holds the No. 3 pick, could be the first inflection point, but it is not the only team that could get busy.

If the 76ers do make a trade, it will be an outlier in recent league history. A top-five pick hasn’t been traded since 2018 when the Atlanta Hawks traded the No. 3 pick to the Mavericks for No. 5 in the famous Luka Dončić for Trae Young deal.

That came a year after the Boston Celtics and 76ers swapped the Nos. 1 and 3 picks. Those are the only two draft night top-five trades since 2010 (Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 pick in 2014, was traded more than a month after the draft in the Kevin Love trade).

(Photo of Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper: Rich Graessle /Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) 

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