March Madness is underway, which means it’s time to update The Athletic’s 2025 NBA Mock Draft. Scouts and executives have been traveling all over the United States to see conference tournaments, one of the best ways to get eyes on a significant number of prospects in one place.
Quite a few players really helped themselves. After Cooper Flagg turned his ankle in the ACC tournament quarterfinals, Duke wing Kon Knueppel stepped up and won tournament MVP honors. Colorado State wing Nique Clifford has put together as strong a two-month stretch as any player in the country, averaging 20 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists since January. He won the Mountain West Conference tournament MVP while leading the Rams to an NCAA Tournament bid. Even UAB forward Yaxel Lendeborg, who couldn’t power his team to the dance, impressed with massive performances in the American Athletic Conference tournament.
The NCAA Tournament can be an important scouting ground for prospects, and it has more potential to help you than to hurt you. If you’re the best player on a good team and you play poorly, your team probably gets eliminated, and thus, it’s only a one-game sample. But if you perform well? On the biggest stage? While leading your team to the Final Four? That’s your final impression, and it’s sometimes about 15 percent of your season.
The draft class remains extremely exciting at the top, thanks to the presence of Flagg and Rutgers guard Dylan Harper. After that, there are significant question marks, but the emergence of a few players has at least helped potentially pad the depth. The key word in that sentence, though, is potentially, as sources across the college basketball and NBA scouting ecosystem have noted the impact of both revenue sharing and name, image, and likeness rights in regard to players staying in school longer.
In terms of positions, the center group in the middle-to-latter portion of the first round and into the second round is seen as a potential source of strength. There are several fun, young guards who possess real upside. Additionally, this class has a bevy of potentially serious shooting if development plays out well over the next few years. And of course, the race to Capture the Flagg has been as wild as ever across the NBA; check out some of the nightly box scores if you want to peruse how many teams are holding talented players out of lineups to force their record to bottom out.
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