Nile! Presents: 2025 NBA Draft Master Notes, Part 2 of 3

Draft Notes on Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, Kasparas Jakucionis, Tre Johnson, Walter Clayton, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Kon Knueppel + Khaman Maluach

Nile! Presents: 2025 NBA Draft Master Notes, Part 2 of 3

In Alphabetical order, Parts One and Three, linked

Cooper Flagg

My consistent denial of Flagg as a generational S-tier prospect was initiated after about two weeks of NCAA play when his suboptimal shot profile paired with underwhelming shot-making and mediocre ball security against Maine, Army, Wofford, and University of Seattle indicated he did not project as an offensive engine in the NBA.

Being a contrarian has its perks. It leads to more thorough examinations of prospects than someone who accepts what fanatics and media members are selling them at face value.

I think that my true sentiment on Flagg could be misunderstood, though. I think he is one of the better prospects in recent history, recent being within the last three or four seasons. That’s about as far as I’d take it.

I believe this is the most relevant query in approximating Flagg’s NBA projection. Extracting all relevant information will allow my seemingly obtuse opinion much more leeway. Underclassmen with pre-NCAA success (90+ RecRank) that accrue rebounds, assists, and steals at the college level while making free throws at an above-average clip provides us a common denominator. Mann and Walton are odd men out based on height/dunk/rim frequency and efficiency deficits.

Having a 18-year old freshman season competitive with that of four premier NBA wings is more than promising for Flagg.

Kinda.

KCP’s 3PAr and smaller frame probably disqualify him from this conversation, regardless of his pro successes.

Porter and Wagner present drastic stylistic differences in offensive process that translated to NBA successes.

The former entered the league just in time to see the Warriors fundamentally alter the shots that off-ball wings were allowed to pursue.

Though he never ended up a super high 3PAr player, Porter extended his range enough to be a 70% rim finisher and 42% 3PT shooter across his ages 23–28 seasons. Along with being one of the most ball-secure I have ever seen, Porter won an NBA championship with the Warriors in 2022 and retired shortly after, with constant injuries as a factor.

Wagner came into the league with as optimized an offensive process as any true wing in his generation. A 19-year old sophomore should not be able to flex a 92nd-percentile Moreyball distribution and high-end ball security.

Wagner is the advanced stat nerd superstar, even without the ability to consistently make three pointers.

Cunningham seeming beat his NCAA shot diet issues by becoming as comfortable as anyone his size shooting the ball off the dribble.

Less than 30 percent of his makes being assisted on 28% USG/20 AST% with a solid free throw rate on a team with zero NBA contributors is a quite viable prospect for the ‘big heliocentric guard’ fantasy perpetuated by Lebron James, James Harden, and Luka Doncic. I’ve never considered myself the biggest fan of Cade’s game or profile as a prospect, but this is an eye-opening perspective.

Flagg is an anomaly in this conversation, but it may not be for the best. His shot distribution is more similar to a prospect from over a decade ago than his 2021 Draftee contemporaries, and both of theirs are more attractive; Wagner for his more optimized diet, and Cunningham for his one-man-army tact.

I am skeptical of Maine’s Finest’s scoring upside in the league. His rim efficiency versus top-80 comp (used to signify the top 25% of teams in NCAA) indicates genuine inability. Even widening the scope from top-80 games, using full-season freshman stats, and reviewing on a historical basis, it is clear Flagg’s finishing could become a desperate affair.

(This part is really important) Flagg’s 220-pound listing at his age seemed to me like a beneficial trait, but if he can’t finish at the rim in college at 6'8, 7'0 wingspan, 220 lbs., and a 35.5-inch max vertical, how much weight will he have to add to be able to be average or above-average in that regard, and what limitations will that put on his vertical and lateral movement? His three-point rate simply is not that of an NBA wing, regardless of solid conversion rates.

Generational prospects do not have similar scoring processes to Kelly Oubre and Josh Okogie, I hate to be the bearer of this news.

The game may never be as easy for Flagg as it was playing against the 2025 rendition of the ACC, second-weakest since 2008 via BartTorvik’s BARTHAG rating, and accounting for as loaded of a supporting cast as he had (illustrated in Anthony Davis mythbust), his scoring load was heavily assisted, archetype-relative, with lukewarm efficiency.

This is not the preface of a generational prospect.

He will receive as many opportunities as any prospect in recent history based on draft slot hype and pedigree, and he has some of the clearest positives in his favor that I believe will surely prevent anything near a ‘failure’ of a career.

Box Plus-Minus is the king metric in NCAA-to-pro projection, and his name is etched at the top of the record books in that regard. Increases in 3PAr would make him as competent an all-around wing as any other, though I believe these increases would need to be substantial. His statistical indicators of high-motor, offensive rebounding and stocks most notably, provide great optimism in winning extra possessions. His size-relative playmaking is impressive, but comes with the caveat of extremely high on-ball usage, playing at a slower pace in an offensive environment where nearly every guard and wing walks into a healthy AST:TO.

FOUR of Duke’s were this season! It’s true that Duke University is a premier prospect evaluation space, and signing intelligent, skilled players comes with the territory, but surely environmental factors allow for such sustained success.

Final Ranking: 2nd

Dylan Harper

There is no prospect in this class primed to be an elite secondary offensive initiator than Dylan Harper. This should place him solidly as one of the premier players in the class. Unfortunately, there is a slippery slope between sustaining the offensive load of full-time offensive engines and secondary/tertiary creators. Harper would fall down this cliff, not unlike predecessors like Colin Sexton or Fox. This isn’t the biggest red flag in all reality, as the number of genuine offensive engines in the world is minuscule.

Harper’s size and versatility will aid him at the next level to a massive degree. His public expectation as an on-ball All-Star creator prospect would be a massive disservice to the underlying ancillary skillset he possesses.

Jalen Williams is really instructive in proving this. Even based on the positional titles used on Tankathon, showing an expectation of different role dynamics from players with similar skillsets and physical proportions (Dubb’s approximate +6 max vert reach /+6.5 max standing vert are amazing plus attributes to have over Harper and allow him to be the third-best player on an NBA champion.)

Once Williams got off the ball with as much frequency, he was able to manipulate the game in ways his college profile could only faintly predict, while retaining the hyper-low turnover percentages that allowed him to be a primary handler without being a super elite passer, vision-wise. Harper is a better passer as a prospect, as well as an equal stock generator (when his pre-NCAA profile said he would struggle mightily.)

None of this resolves his bleak shooting outlook, but taking a page out of his apparent future teammate De’Aaron Fox and brute forcing his 70th percentile frequency OTD middies into OTD threes would help over time. Playing next to a load-bearing offensive engine like Wemby will also allow for him to shoot more C&S 3s, which he’s shot at a fine percentage on negligible volume, because he’s never gotten the opportunity to play with another average creator for a large sample. Third-option Dylan Harper is coming, be ready.

Final Ranking: 5th

Kasparas Jakucionis

It is truly rough to expect NBA success from a player who second-half of the season looked like this.

One may spot a few signs of statistical perseverance throughout as unlucky a shotmaking stint as a legit draft prospect could face.

Find me a 6'4, 205-pound teenager who touches .5 Free Throw Rate, .5 Three-Point Rate, and 6 OREB% on a highly unassisted shot diet in a top-three NCAA conference (or equivalent league) over a 14-game stint where they’re objectively playing poorly.

Ja’Kobe Walter maintained the FTr, 3PAr, and OREB%, but differed with a 20-pound deficit and a first-percentile 2PT% output, and that is why I placed him in the mid-30s on my 2024 board, as opposed to the much elevated ranking of Kasp.

I made the above post when people were giving Kasp Trae Young and Steve Nash comparisons, by the way.

Along with the Dinwiddie comparison, I see similarities between Kasp and another high-impact ‘foul baiting’ guard.

Final Ranking: 11th

Tre Johnson

The above images may be familiar from Anatomy of a Missed Layup, as I used it to describe the lack of pro success high-usage, low defensive impact NCAA players have.

Based on his measurements and in-season playmaking jumps, I do believe Tre Johnson is the best player in that sample (not pictured because he doesn’t have NBA designation in Bart.) Johnson is the player whose ranking feels the most disappointing, but it’s a reaction to what we have to work with.

He shouldn’t be as bad a defender as he is with as elite positional wingspan/lane agility/37-inch vertical, though being 190 pounds and sustaining his offensive load surely played a part.

Speaking of his offensive load, Texas’ offense was comically non-conducive to a player that projects as an off-ball movement shooting contributor.

Some of this is unfortunately Johnson’s fault, as his shot diet is just as non-conducive to drawing fouls or getting shots at the rim.

Shot diet issues and a surefire negative positional defender? Unfortunately, I can’t be a heavy advocate of Johnson, BUT if his maladies are resolved with better team efficiency and athletic improvements (those sprint/shuttle run times were abysmal), I reserve the opportunity to be a fan of his game.

Final Ranking: 14th

Walter Clayton Jr.

A respected associate asked me why I was on the lower end with my placement of Clayton on my original board, and following is my response:

“I’m not sure he has any 2PT equity in the league, with the frame/ftr/not a very resilient rim finisher vs relevant comp= hardlocked off-ball where his S-tier skill (otd 3pt shooting) won’t make as much sense.”

Even then, we still could end up on the right side of history, prompted by DeanOnDraft. Under the proper team circumstances, namely ones with positional size and ball-movement searching for reserve 3PT bombing, Clayton is another prospect that could surpass my placement.

One problem: how many teams does that describe?

Final Ranking: 27th

Ryan Kalkbrenner

Kalkbrenner has a true claim for the title of ‘Rim King’ of the BartTorvik era.

His 2025 season is the pinnacle of two-way center play in college basketball, capping off a career with multiple seasons that also could be the pinnacle of two-way center play.

The defensive discipline needed to deter drives and protect the rim at the rate Kalkbrenner has over his nearly 5,000-minute NCAA college career without fouling is superhuman. Creighton was able to run some of the shortest benches in America (ranking outside the top 300 in bench minutes for four of his five seasons, only creeping around national average in his final season) due to him being absurdly dependable in staying out of foul trouble. Being 7'1 barefoot with a 9'4 standing reach and 7'6 wingspan surely aids this ability. An elite size-relative 3.1-second shuttle run at the 2025 combine points to outlier lateral movement ability, and puts him into a distinct group of NBA performers.

His detractors are mostly obsessed with age, which would be fair enough if he were not a viable lottery-level prospect for the last four seasons. Sophomore Kalkbrenner would be the third-best prospect in the 2025 class pretty easily, even with a partially torn ACL (that healed before the next NCAA season started).

20-year-old Kalk ranked first in OREB% and Fouls per 40, and finished fourth in dunks behind Anthony Davis, Mark Williams, and Christian Koloko, in a basic ‘not-unskilled big man’ query made up of an All-NBA team’s worth of prospects. He proceeded to play three more college seasons without any meaningful slippage in performance.

“But what about his offensive rebounding?” Ask Greg McDermott about offensive rebounding and its effects on efficiency. He’d laugh in your face. “Uhm, okay fine, his defensive rebounding metrics are low, too! And McDermott’s teams rebounded at an above-average level over the past three seasons! How can this be??”

Aside from Scheierman’s heroics, this is yet another coaching tactic.

Asking for a larger DREB focus from wings, in exchange for lesser stock accrual (and the fouls that would come from selling out for stocks) is a pattern taken up by McDermott more than any other coach recently.

Under the strategic guidelines presented, Kalkbrenner maximized every avenue to cement himself as the NCAA Rim King of the 2010s.

A continuation of this ability probably will not deem him the rim king of the NBA, but he should join the Royal Council, currently headed by players like Rudy Gobert, Walker Kessler, Jarrett Allen, Chet Holmgren, Anthony Davis, et al.

Final Ranking: 6th

Kon Knueppel

Kneuppel’s athletically-based defensive deficiencies will be the most direct inhibitor to his returning top-of-class impact. It harmed him on offense as well, with 7% of his FGA were blocked this season. I had Synergy access when I retrieved that stat, but don’t currently, but I believe that was the highest on the team, and is a generally high number at the NCAA level.

An analyst higher on Kon would likely decree that his passing ability will allow him to play on-ball more frequently as he reaches his peak. In dispelling this concept, an underlying case for the #1 prospect in the 2025 class becomes evident. Knueppel’s occasional assist spikes were a reaction to having one of the best lob threats in college basketball as his partner.

It comes as no surprise that removing Maluach dropped Duke’s “rim attack” playtype frequency by nearly ten percent versus t80 comp, while ‘Dribble Jumper’ and ‘Mid-Range’ frequency ballooned with substantially below average efficiency. Maybe this point should be in Maluach’s profile, but it’s just as important to understand that Knueppel benefited massively from playing with a big this disproportionately impactful compared to the field.

Knueppel’s scoring game is as skillful as anyone’s, no joke. That feels so well-known though. He even measured pretty well at the combine, but with no on-court translation, I can’t even defend that. He probably couldn’t defend me either, though.

A top-10 player in a draft class on skill ball offense-only (no running past or jumping over opponents) is impressive as hell, and defense is so team/coaching/scheme-based that he could end up a neutral defender at his best.

Final Ranking: 9th

Khaman Maluach

Based on the sample provided by sorting for the tallest and heaviest prospects of the 21st century with above-average size-relative standing verticals, a pattern of positively influencing team rebounding and free-throw economy appears. At Duke, Maluach didn’t continue this trend, with the team being better, though weaker than national average, on the defensive glass when he was on the bench versus t220 and t80 competition. A few datapoints of dominance should still allow him to surpass his predecessors, which would indicate a top-30 or better multi-season peak in the NBA.

Teenagers as tall, heavy, and agile as Maluach are never this mistake-averse. Leading the sample in free-throw percentage, turnover percentage, and being in a virtual tie for first in fouls per 40 minutes indicates generational refinement that will benefit his team’s Four Factors in ways his predecessors were negative contributors. His 2PT% stands out the most, both among this sample and among NCAA records. College-ref ranks Maluach’s 71.2 field goal percentage 14th all-time (min. 150 attempts), and his single-season ranks in the top 35. Accounting for the strength of schedule (schools of players ahead of him include powerhouses like Belmont, Georgia State, Western Kentucky, and SIU Edwardsville) and class designation (ranks third among freshmen behind Jaxson Hayes and Christian Laettner), he completed one of the best finishing seasons in pre-professional basketball history.

Isolating for Bart-era freshmen who made two-pointers at such an elite rate, and again isolating for adequacy at the free-throw line, a triennial pattern of prospects appears.

Bryant’s impressive intersection of size and touch on offense has sadly been nullified by very arguably being the worst big defender of the 2010s.

Jaxson Hayes is truly a gifted vertical athlete, even today. It’s also apparent that there is very limited place in the NBA for a non-shooting center that weighs 220 pounds, though he is 24 and had a pretty solid season for the Lakers this season.

Hayes and Maluach dunked everything during their freshman seasons, ranking 3rd and 5th in career dunk rate in my Shot Diet Sheet, with Dylan Cardwell, Dereck Lively, and Udoka Azubuike as their closest peers. Fellow Blue Devil Lively is of most interest in regards to Maluach’s pro outlook, and I believe there is a pattern in Duke big prospects and their low free-throw rates.

Dunks are the highest percentage shot in basketball; this is a given. The value of a foul at the college level, where differences between starter and reserve skill can be drastic, entails allowing a nearly assured two points instead of the same nearly assured two points plus a free throw, a lineup-disrupting foul, and the possibility of a reviewed/escalated call.

In addition, since Jon Scheyer took over as head coach in 2023, Duke has not posted an Adjusted Tempo over 245th in the country. See the positive correlation between these factors below.

At a glance, a small club of schools have sent three or more bigs to the NBA since 2021. Indiana is the best point for comparison, as Mike Woodson started his tenure a year before Scheyer, giving them a similar sample size.

Unsurprisingly, Woodson’s Indiana bigs got fouled a lot because they were receiving 95th percentile or higher frequency in ‘Big Cut and Roll’ AND ‘Post-Up’ possessions, two of what I imagine are the highest ‘shooting fouls drawn’ frequency play types.

Duke’s post-up frequency topped out at 78th percentile frequency, and Lively was in a virtual tie with guards Dariq Whitehead and Tyrese Proctor in being the fourth-most frequent player utilized this way. Kyle Filipowski was the post king for Duke in his two years on campus, but his utility as a self-creating post-up playmaker leaves him distant from Maluach or Lively in NBA role. Mark Williams had a precariously low free-throw rate at Duke, and it comes as no surprise that the team did not post-up at all when he was there, sitting below 30th-percentile frequency in his sophomore year.

Surely this lack of opportunity affected Lively and Williams at the NBA level, and their FTRs are low as pros, right?

I guess not.

Apply this understanding to Maluach’s profile and one of his only flaws is heavily alleviated.

That’s how we get to this ranking.

Final Ranking: 1st

I see this as more of a 1A/1B ranking with Flagg, but given the evidence provided to me, I cannot refuse the 7'2, 250-pound 18-year old that could lead the NBA in True Shooting % as a 19-year-old rookie, compared to a player I’m now worried about returning neutral efficiency, nevermind that of a star-level player.

Maluach was the sole motivator to Tyrese Proctor making his way into the draft pool, and made Knueppel look pretty damn good.

Flagg’s non-scoring resilience with Maluach off the floor is a further proof of how competitive and elite of a prospect he is, in his own right.

It will surely be annoying to see and hear the vitrol on displacing Flagg, even with all of the proof I have provided, but I live for this.

Chris Mañon

Block % ≥ 4; Steal % ≥ 5; Conf = truhi;

While my expected influence on the NBA landscape’s decision-making process was overstated at the time of posting, I can at least say that Mañon is an NBA-caliber prospect. His 9.6 Box Plus-Minus ranked 24th in the nation last season, with his DBPM ranking SIXTH!!

Almost two years ago, Mañon was coming off the bench for the 287th-ranked adjusted defense in the nation. This did not stop me from identifying him as a premier defensive playmaker in college basketball, based on his supreme advanced metrics.

View post on X

From February 10th throughout the end of the season, and coinciding with Mañon’s minute count increasing to just over a grueling 20 minutes per game, he was fifth in the nation in BPM vs t80 competition, behind Murray-Boyles, L.J Cryer, John Tonge, and Cooper Flagg.

Over a longer period, Mañon was 22nd in BPM vs t80+ comp from January 10th onward, and while this is clearly impressive, notice that there wasn’t much team success influence to ‘pad’ his metrics.

Of the 35 players with a 9+ BPM over the period, seven of them have a teammate on the leaderboard. Mañon’s +3 total over his closest teammate is a significant disparity of the group, but not the largest.

Caleb Grill’s +3.1 over Anthony Robinson II

VJ Edgecombe’s +3.3 over Josh Ojianwuna

Zakai Zeigler +3.6 over Jahmai Mashack

John Tonje +4.1 over Nolan Winter

JT Toppin +4.3 over Christian Anderson

Bruce Thornton’s +4.5 over Micah Parrish

Nate Bittle +4.6 over Jackson Shelstad

Ryan Kalkbrenner’s +4.7 over Jasen Green

Aday Mara +5.5 over Skyy Clark

Javon Small +6.5 over Sincere Harris

Collin Murray-Boyles +9.9 over Jamarii Thomas

I am not sure how reliable of a datapoint this is, but being the only good player on a high-major college basketball team versus the best of the best smells like an indicator of high-end pro ceiling-raiser upside.

Being such a singular talent, Mañon does have a few outlier statistical barriers to overcome. No pro-caliber guard/wing has had this level of foul volume, especially not in their fifth-year senior season.

Steal % ≥ 5; Fouls/40 ≥ 5;

Identifying outliers like Mañon in an outlier league will provide an organization with an edge. With him being unidentified on consensus draft boards, a league-wide failure to recognize such a talent could look foolish in time. I will be on the right side of history, though, and so will you.

For an even better scouting report on Mañon, read this analysis from one of my favorite writers in the draft community.

Final Ranking: 22nd

Complete Nile! 2025 NBA Draft Board

BONUS CONTENT:

Below is a concept I cooked up earlier this year but never completed about general Best Practices in prospect analysis. I was elated to see @ / doublepg release a more detailed version. His is linked here, but I’ll leave my excerpt below. Thank you.

Simple Shortcut for Identifying NCAA Underclassmen eligible for the NBA Draft Player Pool

A pre-NCAA data/hype level is required to propel any prospect to one-and-done NBA status. Deep sleepers do not go 1&D for understandable reasons. In most situations, a prospect primed to be good enough to play a single season in college and transition to the NBA will not be ranked very low. The RSCI process is that reliable, at least. With this knowledge, we can use the Barttorvik database to examine best practices for vetting freshman prospects for watchlist purposes.

Prior to the 2025 draft, there have been 236 NBA-designated players who played only a freshman season in CBB, not accounting for redshirt seasons (I imagine there are a few in the mix)

This concept is pretty intuitive but can be utilized in practice for a more streamlined statistical scouting process, as the above diagram states. Enjoy the Zhaire Smith prospect myth bust, as a comprehensive profile is not in the works.

Thank you.

Nile!