2025 NBA Draft
I’ve been evaluating NBA Draft prospects professionally for a decade now, first at CBS Sports and now at The Athletic. Because we’re coming up on a nice round number, and because Duke forward Cooper Flagg projects as one of the truly elite prospects over that period, I decided to look back at the 20 prospects over the last decade who received the highest grades from me before the draft.
This was a fun exercise, and one that I learned a lot from. Among my top-10 prospects, excluding Flagg, seven of the nine have gone on to become All-Stars. Of the 18 prospects listed who have played in the NBA, 12 have made an All-Star game, and I’d expect Chet Holmgren to join that group in the coming seasons. That’s not a bad hit rate for choosing the elite of the elite.
And yet, I’m hard on myself as an evaluator and constantly try to learn from mistakes. I probably was not quite as certain as I could have been over my first five years and think I have gotten drastically better over the last two years. Largely, that’s because I’ve learned from my errors.
One lesson that popped up for me during this process: If you have questions about a player’s competitiveness, drive or off-court character, you should listen to those. Many of the players below who have abbreviated peaks or never hit their expected level had some sort of problem with those factors. Once you get drafted highly, the job isn’t finished. You need to continue to improve; otherwise the rest of the league will catch up.
