The college hoops fan's view of the 2025 NBA Draft: Part One

A look at every first-round pick as it happened (sort of) Wednesday night

This was a mistake.

The concept was simple. Sit down, watch the NBA Draft, and write about every pick as it happens — your friendly neighborhood college basketball writer live-blogging some thoughts on how the players we’ve all watched so intently would fare in their NBA careers.

Simple, right? “As it happens” was the unfortunate operative term. Turns out, there are only five minutes between draft picks these days — who knew? — which is great for viewers but not exactly conducive to an intentionally anachronistic live-blog approach. Let’s see, just finishing up this quick riff on about Jeremiah Fe — what? Wait, who just got picked? Who got traded where? What pick is it now? How far behind are we?!

Anyway, the core of the premise holds: Below is a recounting of every first-round pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, with an eye on their college tenures and what sticks out to us about their future — from obviousness (Cooper Flagg) to incongruity (Chinese Jokic?) to despair (Kendrick Perkins talking about players he’s never watched) and everything in between.

Here’s the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft, as it happened. Sort of.

(Part Two coming tomorrow morning. After, you know, the second round.)

No. 1: Cooper Flagg, Dallas Mavericks

Oh, look, Cooper Flagg got drafted No. 1 overall. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? The inevitability here makes it hard to write anything particularly interesting. Flagg was an unbelievable college player — the best in the country — while being one of the youngest players in Division I, and also a guy who consistently improved throughout his freshman season. Cooper Flagg: good at basketball. Like and subscribe.

The only real question is to what height Flagg’s NBA career will ascend. There is a school of thought, an understandable one, that Flagg might just be a very good pro, a consistently productive and very well-renumerated pro, but not a future perennial All-NBA guy. Maybe.

We would tend toward the higher end of that spectrum. Flagg had moments where he looked like the best offensive player in the country. He had just as many moments, if not more, where he looked best defensive player in college basketball. On top of all that, though, he spent an entire season with the broadcast media Eye of Sauron on him, and he really never faltered, on or off the court. He showed it again later in the draft show Wednesday night when he joined the ESPN desk, when he truly sounded like he had been in the NBA for 10 years — like he had done countless postgame headphone interviews with Chuck and Kenny and Shaq, that he had internalized how much this stuff matters without taking himself overly seriously.

He’s a special, special player. His freshman season was a privilege.

No. 2: Dylan Harper, San Antonio Spurs

A couple of things that are wild about Dylan Harper, vis a vis his draft position:

1. His college teammate, Ace Bailey, more about which below, has completely overshadowed him in the media narrative of the draft.

2. Both guys played for a 17-16 college team (!!).

3. We never really freaked out and dropped our jaw about anything Harper did last year in the same way as Flagg or Bailey or even, like, Tre Johnson.

4. The NBA loved him anyway. The Spurs picked him No. 2 anyway.

The wildest thing? All of this seems perfectly reasonable! Harper is potentially good enough that the NBA hivemind, such as it exists, decided to ignore Rutgers’ season entirely. And why not? The Scarlet Knights had two insanely talented freshmen and a bunch of below-replacement Big Ten minutes-fillers, and while they played faster than most Steve Pikiell teams, they didn’t exactly space the floor or run cutting-edge stuff on offense.

Meanwhile, the Spurs — who already have a glut of ball-dominant guards, including De’Aaron Fox (whom they just traded for) and Stephon Castle (whom they just drafted) — went for the pedigree anyway. This entire spring has been a ringing endorsement of a player we passively enjoyed but never really connected with last season, a forgettable collegiate pit stop en route to the presumption of more.

No. 3: V.J. Edgecombe, Philadelphia 76ers

A brief aside: It’s truly incredible that Kendrick Perkins is live on the desk for the NBA draft. Does anyone — ESPN’s NBA Draft producers, the co-hosts, viewers, Kendrick Perkins himself — believe that Kendrick Perkins is the best person to cover the NBA Draft? We ask because as of this writing (still live here, before we fell behind!) he just insisted the 76ers needed to draft someone to make another NBA title run, which, OK, whatever, maybe, given how bad the East is, but even a novice NBA fan knows what the 76ers really needed to do was draft the best player possible because Joel Embiid is constantly hurt and getting older, Paul George is just old, and the 76ers have a couple of really good young guards that the team’s roster-building timeline really needs to revolve around.

But don’t worry, if you were looking for actual draft analysis: Perkins also believes V.J. “is a dog.” So that’s good.

Anyway, love Edgecombe, electric athlete, played for a slightly disappointing (by its own standards) Baylor team, but everyone in Waco praised him constantly for his attitude and work ethic while he demonstrated his remarkable athleticism (given) and ever-improving savvy (crucial). Probably needs to learn to finish non-dunks a bit better, yes, but he’ll be a lively pro.

No. 4: Kon Knueppel, Charlotte Hornets

The NBA is getting too good at this.

Once upon a time, Knueppel would have been this draft’s prime opportunity for college hoops fans to feel smarter than NBA general managers. Once upon a time, NBA GMs would have ignored Knueppel’s incredible decision-making and feel and versatility and productivity in one freshman season. Once upon a time, NBA GMs would have obsessed about his athleticism — or, in his case, lack thereof — to the point that once upon a time Knueppel wouldn’t have even entered the draft after his freshman season. He would have had an incredible three-year career at Duke, and when eventually he was drafted we college basketball fans would have been able to smugly lay down our markers a year or two before Knueppel became a title contender’s important fourth option. We told you so.

Keep in mind, until recently this all seemed like a live possibility. Knueppel didn’t become a five-star prospect until late in his high school career, and very few considered him a top-five pick six months ago. Instead, he just got drafted fourth overall ahead of Ace Bailey. Absolutely nobody was surprised.

Stop ruining this for us, NBA! Go back to being worse at your jobs! Sigh.

No. 5: Ace Bailey, Utah Jazz

We sort of feel bad for Ace Bailey.