2025 NBA Draft

Chicago 1995 said:
Not sure why Kon's upside is lower. Bane's maybe reached the 95th percentile of his ceiling, and that's something we can't know how close Kon -- or any draft prospect -- will get.

And Flagg made things easier for everyone on our team sure, but there's also the possibility that Kon with higher usage would have shown an even more well rounded game. Given what Kon showed in a playmaking role in the limited chances he had without Coop, it seems to be possible at least that Kon's draft status wouldn't have been effected all that much without Coop.
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It's not official until his name is called on draft night as a top 10 pick, but the NBA GMs are signaling that they expect that Kon will be a Desmond Bane level player. He was the #3 scorer on Memphis at 19.2ppg behind Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson.

A fan thinking they know more about an NBA prospect than the GMs is right up there with thinking they know more about a Duke player than Jon Scheyer.

Also Bane was the 30th pick so he has performed at the 90th percentile to have his level of impact, but if Kon is the 5-8 pick in the draft, then a Bane-like career would be Kon performing at 50th percentile.
 
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SkyBrickey said:
I take your overall point here, but I think your numbers are a bit off. You need to do better than a 5th starter (on average) with the #10 pick in the NBA draft.

If the draft were completely random each year, as an NBA GM you'd only get the #10 pick or better 5 times in 15 years. The avg NBA career of a first round pick is approximately 7.5 years. That math suggests teams need to - on average - land a 5th starter with their 20th pick, not their 10th pick.

The math suggests you want to lock in a 2/3 starter with the #10 pick as you'd only get a pick that high once every 3 years.

So I think my point that if you believe Kon is a 5th to 9th type player, then he'd be a pick in the 20s or 30s is accurate.
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We're in agreement on all relevant points, so this is academic. But we both obviously think this is an interesting subject, so I'll respond (until other posters start to complain).

Your math is interesting - I didn't use any. Instead, I looked at a bunch of draft classes, roughly ranked the players (both subjectively and using metrics like WS, WS/48, etc.), and roughly assessed the guys in the 9-12 range in each class. If you do the same, I think you'll find few players who are the ~10th best in their draft class who have regularly been the #2/#3 guy on a not-terrible team. This is a rough model, so I'll concede the right answer could be somewhere between your position and mine.

I think your math is flawed in using the 7.5 year average career length. That may be the right number for first rounders, but we're talking about "10th best" guys, and career length is closely correlated with career success (that is, the top few players will play 15-20 (or 22) years, and the bottom may play only a few). Nearly all of the "top ten per class" drafted since 2015 are still playing, many from 2010-2015 are still playing, and some are older than that. That means they are well over 100 "top ten per class" guys in the league, though some are washed, which means there are at least 3-4 for each team. Though perhaps 5 is a stretch.

Of course, where guys fall in the pecking order goes up and down over time, so this involves a lot of guesswork and dubious assumptions. But overall, I think anyone picked in the 10-15 range who becomes a regular starter or key reserve has generally met historical expectations.
 
Billy Dat said:
Two fun interviews...

Scheyer with Ryen Russillo

It's mostly about the draft but Russillo goes in on the Houston game and it's the most I have heard Jon talk about it, good stuff.

Kon with Bill Simmons

Really, really good. Kon is such a self-assured, laid back dude.
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Great interview with Jon and Russillo. What's the Pat Bev story??
 
phaedrus said:
We're in agreement on all relevant points, so this is academic. But we both obviously think this is an interesting subject, so I'll respond (until other posters start to complain).

Your math is interesting - I didn't use any. Instead, I looked at a bunch of draft classes, roughly ranked the players (both subjectively and using metrics like WS, WS/48, etc.), and roughly assessed the guys in the 9-12 range in each class. If you do the same, I think you'll find few players who are the ~10th best in their draft class who have regularly been the #2/#3 guy on a not-terrible team. This is a rough model, so I'll concede the right answer could be somewhere between your position and mine.

I think your math is flawed in using the 7.5 year average career length. That may be the right number for first rounders, but we're talking about "10th best" guys, and career length is closely correlated with career success (that is, the top few players will play 15-20 (or 22) years, and the bottom may play only a few). Nearly all of the "top ten per class" drafted since 2015 are still playing, many from 2010-2015 are still playing, and some are older than that. That means they are well over 100 "top ten per class" guys in the league, though some are washed, which means there are at least 3-4 for each team. Though perhaps 5 is a stretch.

Of course, where guys fall in the pecking order goes up and down over time, so this involves a lot of guesswork and dubious assumptions. But overall, I think anyone picked in the 10-15 range who becomes a regular starter or key reserve has generally met historical expectations.
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It's an interesting debate. The only input to my model is the 7.5 year average career for a first rounder. All the rest is just math. I went to ChatGPT for that number. Posting its response at the bottom. Since we are haggling over picks 10-20 in the middle of the first round, I don't think the 7.5 year number is too low - the AI suggests if anything it's a bit too high.

The other way to do this would be to look at picks 9-11 over the past 20 years (60 players) and see what ppg they averaged over their peak 3-4 seasons in the NBA. I'm too lazy to do it but the math suggests we'd find they cluster around 15-20ppg as the 2/3 option on an average NBA team.

ChatGPT on average career length for a first rounder:

"The average NBA career length for a first-round draft pick is approximately 4.5 to 6 years, depending on several factors such as draft position (lottery vs. late first round), injury history, and performance.

Here’s a breakdown:

Top 10 picks generally have longer careers, averaging 7–10 years, since they are given more development time and opportunities.
Mid-to-late first-round picks typically average around 4–6 years, though many do not last beyond their rookie contract (4 years)."
 
Ok, turns out this was a great task for the AI. The median peak season ppg for the #10 draft pick from 2000-2019 was 14.8 ppg. That's probably #3 starter territory. Here's the response:

"Here’s a complete list of #10 NBA Draft picks from 2000 to 2019, along with each player’s career-high points per game (PPG) in a single season. At the end, I calculate the mean (average) peak PPG for these players.
⸻
🏀 #10 NBA Draft Picks & Career-High PPG (2000–2019)
2000 Keyon Dooling
9.7 (2009–10)
2001 Joe Johnson
25.0 (2006–07)
2002 Caron Butler
20.8 (2007–08)
2003 Jarvis Hayes
10.2 (2004–05)
2004 Luke Jackson
6.7 (2006–07)
2005 Andrew Bynum
18.7 (2011–12)
2006 Saer Sene
2.3 (2006–07)
2007 Spencer Hawes
13.4 (2013–14)
2008 Brook Lopez
20.7 (2011–12)
2009 Brandon Jennings
19.1 (2011–12)
2010 Paul George
23.7 (2018–19)
2011 Jimmer Fredette
7.6 (2013–14)
2012 Austin Rivers
15.1 (2017–18)
2013 C.J. McCollum
23.0 (2016–17)
2014 Elfrid Payton
12.8 (2018–19)
2015 Justise Winslow
12.6 (2018–19)
2016 Thon Maker
5.0 (2018–19)
2017 Zach Collins
7.0 (2020–21)
2018 Mikal Bridges
21.0 (2022–23)
2019 Cam Reddish
11.9 (2020–21)

Mean Peak PPG Calculation

Peak PPGs:
9.7, 25.0, 20.8, 10.2, 6.7, 18.7, 2.3, 13.4, 20.7, 19.1,
23.7, 7.6, 15.1, 23.0, 12.8, 12.6, 5.0, 7.0, 21.0, 11.9

Total Sum: 296.7
Number of Players: 20

Mean Peak PPG = 296.7 ÷ 20 = 14.84

⸻

✅ Final Answer:
• Mean career-high PPG for #10 picks (2000–2019): 14.8 PPG
 
Same analysis for #1-#9 picks gives the following median peak ppg seasons:

#1 - 23.0ppg
#2 - 14.9ppg
#3 - 20.2ppg
#4 - 15.7ppg
#5 - 17.0ppg
#6 - 12.9ppg
#7 - 16.3ppg
#8 - 12.1ppg
#9 - 13.4ppg
#10 - 14.8ppg

This is pretty interesting. Hasherm Thabeet, Darko Milicic and Jay Williams (injury) tanked it for the #2 picks. Picks #6-10 are largely a crapshoot.
 
crote said:
Not going to check all of these, but this one jumped out as most obviously wrong. 2018-19 was Paul George's career high season ppg, but he scored 28.0 ppg that year, not 23.7. He did average 23.7 in 16-17, which maybe explains the hallucination.

Almost as if LLM's are good at generating superficially plausible responses, not accurate ones, and people shouldn't rely on them for even trivially important tasks.
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Good catch. It's a good thing this task is not even trivially important. :) So don't give your spreadsheets just yet?
 
SkyBrickey said:
Same analysis for #1-#9 picks gives the following median peak ppg seasons:

#1 - 23.0ppg
#2 - 14.9ppg
#3 - 20.2ppg
#4 - 15.7ppg
#5 - 17.0ppg
#6 - 12.9ppg
#7 - 16.3ppg
#8 - 12.1ppg
#9 - 13.4ppg
#10 - 14.8ppg

This is pretty interesting. Hasherm Thabeet, Darko Milicic and Jay Williams (injury) tanked it for the #2 picks. Picks #6-10 are largely a crapshoot.
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"Median peak PPG for draft picks?" The most positive thing I can say is that, at least, we are not averaging ordinal ratings, like we often do for HS recruits and college players.
 
I listened to Sam Vecenie's pod about what the Spurs may do this offseason. It was pretty good.

His advice was to trade the #14 pick and another draft pick to Portland who owns the Bucks 2029 pick and 2028 and 2030 swap rights with the Bucks. He said go get that and throw the #2 and Castle at the Bucks for Giannis.

The Bucks haul would be this year's #2 (Harper), last year's #4 (Castle) and they get the draft picks back so they can control their destiny.

Short of that, he said draft Dylan Harper and have a nice day.

He also said the Spurs have an extension decision to make with Da'Aaron Fox this summer. Fox is extension eligibile this summer for a lesser max deal. Sam thinks the Spurs will want to sign the extension now and Fox will try to delay a year so he can gun for All-NBA which would make him eligible for a bigger max deal (the super max... I dont recall exactly).

He said what the Spurs do with Fox is a signal as to whether they push chips in now or let the roster develop for another year and push chips in next year. Fox on a super max could make the roster very very expensive in a few years when Castle, Wemby, Harper have to get paid. Fox as a super max guy and a 3rd option make it untenable with the 2nd apron. Same says he would shop Fox and target Giannis or Trey Murphy.
 
brevity said:
With the NBA Draft two weeks away, the league has started inviting players to attend in the green room. It will probably end up being about 20-25 players, but here's the initial set of 13, according to Jonathan Givony...
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brevity said:
Jonathan Givony now reports that 6 more players have been invited: Noa Essengue, Collin Murray-Boyles, Thomas Sorber, Liam McNeeley, Nolan Traore, and Will Riley. That's 19 of an expected 24 invites.
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And we've reached 24 players in the NBA Draft green room. Jonathan Givony says that Joan Beringer, Nique Clifford, Cedric Coward, Walter Clayton Jr, and Danny Wolf are the latest additions.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1935732973896106431

There's a wide variety of opinions about how the draft will go, but I think all or almost all of them have these 24 in the first round. I don't see any of these guys having to wait until the next day to get selected.
 
superdave said:
Sam says he would shop Fox and target Giannis or Trey Murphy.
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Hang on… Giannis or Trey Murphy?!?! I mean Murphy had a nice season for a terrible club that was missing all of its top players, but the difference in those two guys is like saying, “for dinner I’m either going to have a shrimp cocktail or I’m going to eat every damn thing at the buffet.”

How can those be your two options?!

FWIW, I think the Spurs should go for Giannis. If it costs Castle and the #2, so be it (but I suspect you can maybe do it for Fox and the #2). The size on that team would be outrageous.
 
Apparently Kon is now the betting favorite to go #4 after Cooper, Harper, Edgecombe - ahead of Ace Bailey and Tre Johnson. That's surprising.
 
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