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

Draft Notes on Bogoljub Markovic, Collin Murray-Boyles, Asa Newell, Noah Penda, Derik Queen, Jase Richardson, Thomas Sorber, and Adou Thiero

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

In alphabetical order. Parts One and Two linked.

Bogoljub Markovic

Final Ranking: 17th

Collin Murray-Boyles

This now-viral explanation for a ranking that disappointed my dear friend is as relevant as ever. Thanks to everyone that’s referenced it, as understanding the ‘sticky’ nature of NCAA shot diet in relation to NBA translation is a great layer to consider.

This is a viable, reasonable response to the original post, and I appreciated the insight being added for all to see. I didn't have time to respond at the moment, but I do not believe his handle will save him to the degree of returning t5 value in the class.

CMB’s ranking, more than any other on my board, is directly related to preferring the players ahead of him, as opposed to not believing in him.

Final Ranking: 8th

Asa Newell and Noah Penda

There is nothing I can say about Asa Newell or Noah Penda that will be as sufficient in understanding my thoughts on him as the piece produced by one of my most frequent collaborators and friends, Avi. I implore you to digest his work whenever possible, as I believe he is a genius.

Newell’s Final Ranking: 20th

Penda’s Final Ranking: 15th

Derik Queen

Queen is the most consequential prospect in the class for me. I guess the colloquial terminology is ‘low floor, high ceiling’. He’s unusually singular in that respect. The status of his positional versatility is of massive importance to ranking and projecting him; specifically, confirming that Queen is a viable option at center in the NBA is mandatory.

He played 368 possessions versus t80 competition without Julian Reese on the court, and they went way better than you may have expected, on a team and individual basis.

Substantial leaps in rebounding and rim finishing as the solo big lend credence to Queen sustaining some success like this as a pro. Leaps in assist percentage are nullified by an 21 turnover percentage and regression of already-mediocre stock rates. His playtypes do see an interesting change as the solo big, and I am pretty sure they are the cause of the turnovers.

Huge leaps in ‘Perimeter Cut’ and ‘Transition’ frequency had Queen’s fingerprints all over them, as these quick-hitting possessions saw high-leverage passing volume fall heavily on him. High-leverage passing volume does come with higher turnovers for the quarterback, but reduces load from teammates (see: Trae Young having one of the highest ORAPMs in lifetime RAPM and being one of the highest turnover players ever.)

Removing Reese from the court also allowed for massive improvements in Moreyball frequency and rim efficiency on both ends, as well as leaps in every single rotation player other than Queen, who was already working at a 90th percentile FTR in the nation. Not only can Queen be a singular hub big, he should play this role more frequently than not.

By virtue of being a good free-throw shooter for someone with his FTR, as well as being a high-usage self-creator that naturally eats possessions (keeping less-skilled handlers/passers from ‘wasting’ plays with turnovers or missed reads), Queen’s upside as a positive offensive contributor in the Offensive Three Factors (team true shooting, turnover percentage, and offensive rebounding) and is apparent, and that’s without any mention of his jumpshot developing.

Queen remained a 99th percentile rebounder as the solo big versus t220 opponents, and his influence here should help sustain his defensive impact. Outside of his weight, none of his measurements or testing results indicate a player that could be a plus deflection-generator or rim-protector. The question would be how much of a negative he could end up as, but aside from being outlier bad and showing zero improvement, he should be able to sustain something like a -1 or better in DRAPM, and something like a 1 or 2 in ORAPM at his peak. This should be good enough to be the 13th best prospect in a draft class (the next profile dives into this heavily).

Final Ranking: 13th

Jase Richardson

Coaching influence on prospect production is a staple of my prospect analysis, and Tom Izzo’s long-lasting tenure as Michigan State coach provides one of the largest samples of of player-coach interaction in college basketball.

Since 2010 (the first season BartTorvik has complete play-by-play data), three Spartans listed 6'6 or shorter, with sub-6 OREB% have been drafted. Denzel Valentine and Gary Harris standout among 47 individual seasons with more than 50 percent of the team’s minutes played. Bryn Forbes played over 9,000 NBA minutes (regular and postseason) after spending two seasons as a Spartan and going undrafted. Max Christie coasted on his high school ranking to a one-and-done season after one of the least productive NCAA seasons of a draft pick in recent history.

This objectively has not been a very successful lineage. Cassius Winston’s athletic deficits kept him from playing anything more than a few games in the NBA. Kalin Lucas and Keith Appling played even less because of their sub-NBA skillsets. Aaron Henry was a consensus mid-second round prospect in 2021, ahead of Herb Jones, Santi Aldama, and Austin Reaves, but his profile does not present much promise retrospectively outside of junior-season leaps in unassisted scoring volume and assist percentage solely related to increased on-ball utility brought on by Winston’s graduation.

It is mandatory to prove that Jase Richardson is clearly the best Spartan guard prospect in this sample, because being anything less would probably leave him designated as a ‘bust’ from any pick within the top 20. Even with hindsight on our side, Harris is clearly the prospect to beat, with Valentine and Christie in a virtual tie for second and third, with Winston and Henry rounding out the top five as fringe NBA players. It should be easy to visualize a lack of NBA feasibility for most of these prospects, starting with Henry and working backwards.

Easy enough for Henry. I don’t believe anyone in my audience would argue Ish Smith was a potent on-court contributor in the NBA.

Cassius Winston?

A little harder, because of the single-season excellence of one Kevin ‘Yogi’ Ferrell.

This was a prototype Payton Pritchard ‘incompetent league’ evaluation six years before I made mine. Playing all 82 games on a pre-Luka Mavericks team, Ferrell topped the team in net rating and was one of the highest-rated in the metric of his age cohort.

When isolated from the three worst rotation players in the lineup (Wesley Matthews, Harrison Barnes, Dennis Smith Jr.), Ferrell led lineups to a 11.2 net-rating with a handful of players in the twilight of their career as his most frequent partners.

Ferrell signed with the Sacramento Kings for the following two seasons and was unremarkable. Some of this was due to the transition from playing with veteran ball-movers under Rick Carlisle to lower-feel players like rookie/sophomore Marvin Bagley, Buddy Hield, Harry Giles, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Harrison Barnes (again??). Ferrell shared the court with De’Aaron Fox for 148 minutes during his time as King, just under ten percent of his total minutes, and their lineups were +5.64, and they were playing with just anybody.

He was out of the league a few seasons later and has been leading above-average European teams for the past four seasons, at the age where players usually reach their peak (from 28 to 31). It’s not a given that the NBA ecosystem missed out on one of the best 200 or so players in the world, but it’s more than possible. I digress.

We are now down to Jase Richardson, Max Christie, Denzel Valentine, and Gary Harris as the best Bart-era Michigan State guard/wing prospect.

Christie and Valentine present two easy-to-fade archetypes in NBA terms, despite positive traits. The latter’s senior-season Box Plus Minus of 14.6 ranks fifteenth out of the thousands of player seasons in BartTorvik. Even more impressive, of seasons with free-throw rates below 25, Valentine was second behind Stephen Curry’s 2008 sophomore season. The Bulls selected him with the final pick of the lottery, believing his draft age and substantial career-long 2PT inefficiency would not deter his pro success.

Shooting 36% from two and being completely displaced from on-ball usage as a 24-year-old rookie was the end of that.

Max Christie was abysmal at Michigan State. There’s an easy argument that the Lakers selecting him with the 35th pick after such a poor display of skill was the worst draft pick in a very long time, only to be bested by the same team drafting an even worse prospect in Jalen Hood-Schifino a year later. He’s done nothing in the league to validate the selection.

Being 19 on draft day and fitting this somewhat rare athletic shooter+ archetype, even with as little success as he had in performing the tasks, gave him as much of a chance as Valentine.

This process of elimination brings us to the only two genuine Spartan NBA guard prospects of recent history, Gary Harris and Jase Richardson. It’s important to understand what being projected as a better pro would mean for Richardson.

Using three-season RAPM peaks of the 2014 draft class as a standard, Harris ranks tenth. There are additional factors to utilize in optimizing draft class rankings, but this method accounts for sustained top-end, on-court impact better than any other.

Only four players near or ahead of him (+2 RAPM peak or higher) were drafted ahead of or near him (i.e., expected to be equal or better by their draft team), with Capela, Bogdanovic, and Anderson being late first-rounders and Dinwiddie, Jokic, and Powell second-round selections. As elite a prospect as Jokic was, a 40-spot difference on consensus boards indicates virtually no one expected the real-life outcome. Unsurprisingly, one of the people who did predict Jokic>Harris was DeanOnDraft, who I consider the premier Draft Twitter evaluator, based on his process. Generally, I believe this talent distribution validates the idea of believing in one’s own evaluation and not being restrained by attempts to estimate ‘draft slot lineup equity’.

With draft class strength being a myth, in that the distribution of talent in any given class is not disproportionate to another, Richardson being a better prospect than Harris would indicate his worthiness as a top-ten selection in the 2025 class (and any other class).

Let’s do it. I will now provide all of their relevant data, and leave it up to interpretation. I do not believe Jase is a better prospect than Gary Harris was.

Richardson has fans in the online draft community, ostensibly because of historically high advanced metrics and scoring efficiency at a young age. One of the metrics that stand out for Richardson is his pristine 2.3 assist-to-turnover ratio. THIS IS A PSYOP. NCAA Assist-to-turnover ratio loses massive predictive value when the player a) plays in a structurally low-turnover environment and b) does not have a high playmaking load.

Players who accomplished this low turnover, low playmaking matrix have shown the ability to maintain solid ball security at the next level, but this comes with a few issues.

Even more alarming for Richardson enthusiasts is that Michigan State is as easy an environment to sustain noteworthy assist-to-turnover ratios as any in the country.

He’s one of the older freshman prospects in the class, so there’s not much room to boost him for being young like Maluach/Fears/Bailey/etc, but being 20 during the entirety of his rookie season objectively is not old, especially to someone with 23-year-old prospects ahead of him on their board.

Off Reb % ≤ 3.5; Assist % ≤ 20; 3PA/100 Poss ≤ 12; Height ≤ 77; Class = FrSo; SORTED BY 3PAr and accounting for more recent examples, smaller guards that don’t playmake or rebound at above average rates AND aren’t flamethrower high-volume shooters have a low success rate in the NBA.

Off Reb % ≤ 4; Assist % ≤ 18; Turnover % ≤ 12; Block % ≤ 1.5; Rec. Rank ≥ 50; Class = FrSo; (season)

Off Reb % ≤ 3; Turnover % ≤ 14; Free Throw Rate ≥ 35; Rec. Rank ≥ 90; Class = FrSo; Min% ≥ 0;

It sucks, but Jase looks a bit too much like supercharged Doron Lamb. That’s not a bad pro, but it’s not the superhero that the Nerd Brigade is promising the world either. I don’t even hold the reservation to become a fan later like with Tre Johnson. I think this is a solid/mediocre pro, and I will not jump on the bandwagon.

Final Ranking: 19th

Kadary Richmond

See: most of Anatomy of a Missed Layup

Final Ranking: 18th

Javon Small

This was the premier Small pusher for me this season, and when Small is a certified successful pro, I will have Avi to thank for my board’s accuracy.

Final Ranking: 21st

Thomas Sorber

PSA: People keep talking about Sorber’s defensive on-offs. Moving forward, make sure to correct them and let them know to use On-Baseline stats, as On-Offs are describing Thomas Sorber’s impact versus Drew Fielder’s

Sorber’s injury-shortened season likely preserved his stats.

The difference in his impact versus ‘real’ competitioin and Q4 teams is drastic.

The only ‘successful’ NBA big that I’ve seen that struggled in the same ways versus t150 teams was Bobby Portis… who kinda sucks.

But, if Portis was taller and had a longer wingspan, he would suck less.

Final Ranking: 24th

The 24th slot on my board indicates about a 50% chance at a sustained NBA career, in my mind. This seems very reasonable with Sorber’s strenghts and weaknesses.

Adou Thiero

Or, Tari Eason 2: Oladipo’s Pride

From a teambuilding perspective, I regard wings much lower than most. The public’s fascination with players not big or tall enough to play in the frontcourt or skilled enough to be a guard is nonsensical. Saying this, some of the greatest players in the league today are wings. How can this be? And isn’t there an urgency in finding the NEXT GREAT WING?

There is no need to chase trends. If an analyst is given enough time and has enough patience, there are no trends in prospect evaluation. I make a solid amount of takes about NCAA-NBA progression, and this could be the hottest of them all. Every single player to have ever succeeded in the NBA has outlier statistical and anthropometric measures that can explain their NBA success.

Even in viewing Stephen Curry’s profile at a mid-major level, that of the most transcendent and individual statistical profile of any modern-era NCAA prospect, a distinctness is present. Thiero may not break the game in the way Curry did, but his ability as the most athletic wing in the world will give him the edge needed to return top-end class value.

I think that’s the most descriptive query to show Theiro’s individual, potentially game-breaking impact.

Some wings may dunk around once a game. Some wings may touch a 3 steal percentage. Some may even be contact-seeking enough to flirt with a 60 free-throw rate, like Chris Udofia in his senior season at the University of Denver in 2014 versus the almighty Summit League. Thiero did it in arguably the most competitive college basketball conference play in modern history.

Discerning his edge is of massive importance in ranking him this high in a draft class. I am predicting near all-star value with my evaluation, and this is a drastic difference from his dull, simplistic consensus ranking.

Kawhi’s edge was a brute-force mid-range barrage. exhibiting himself in supreme comfort in self-creating shots that win playoff games. Naturally, it helps that his physical measurements teeter on alien, as with Kevin Durant, whose collegiate scoring volume is jarring in retrospect. Once, the groupchat and I estimated that he attempted at least 250 rim attempts in his sole collegiate season. It is ALIEN to do that while making 82 threes and shooting over 80 percent at the free-throw line. I ranked Jared McCain above consensus based on shooting measures mirroring this, and he does not have a 7'5 wingspan. In fact, he does not have a 6'5 wingspan. He is, in NBA terms, a very very small player.

I could do this for any perpetually elite wing. I can also quickly identify the differences between these titans and the lackluster crop of prospects expected to fill their footsteps. Josh Jackson’s middling wingspan and abysmal free-throw accuracy left him without a chance, no matter how otherwise productive he was, and without using his off-court maladies as a scapegoat for a failure to evaluate statistical profiles.

This was objectively Cam Reddish’s best eight-game run at Duke, and an NBA front office drafted him in the lottery.

Thiero’s edge is the rare intersection between touch and vertical excellence. On the latter point, it is a social tragedy that his only ‘official’ vertical measurement is from the 2023 Kentucky Pro Day, where there was an incentive to embellish numbers. His father has been campaigning on his behalf on Twitter, with video evidence that substantiates the on-court product.

Like Oladipo and Eason before him, Thiero’s willingness to shoot for such an athletic disruptor is a genuine rarity. Relatively hot shooting seasons from the former two led to especially gaudy impact metrics and shooting outlooks, but were/have not been substantiated in the NBA.

Thiero has an edge on two elite NBA performers in this regard, while being comparable in nearly every other way. Everyone knows the urban legend that Thiero was a volume three-point shooter in high school; that’s too easy. I have apparently cooked up a shooting query that would have predicted some 3PT shooting success in the league from NBA champion Ajay Mitchell, Zach Edey (!!), Obi Toppin, Isaiah Stewart, Rui Hachimura, Grant Williams, and many more, regardless of their low-volume/mediocre accuracy in college.

3PA/100 Poss ≤ 5; Free Throw % ≥ 0.7; Far 2 FG% ≥ 0.42;

Along with being way ahead of the field with a career 47 non-rim2%, Thiero’s is position-locked as a wing. Perhaps a player a few inches taller with his weak three-point accuracy could be utilized in more traditional ways, as a roller and cutter. Within that, the necessity of a catch-and-shoot three-pointer will become neccecary, and he has the touch indicators needed to project shooting no worse than average.

Beyond shooting the ball, Thiero should be able to dominate NBA players in generating transition, like his predecessors.

Without play-by-play resources, it’s unable to see exactly how similarly Oladipo and Thiero generated offense in college, but Hoop-Explorer’s player leaderboard allows us to see strikingly similar playtype frequency in their draft seasons. I note a much higher frequency of ‘attack and kick’ and ‘hits cutter’ possessions for Thiero, while he maintained a pristine turnover rate, as well as the aforementioned hella cash middy/floater frequency.

Eason’s superior rebounding on both ends evens the playing field for me, and perhaps I’d even more greatly prefer Eason’s +2 inch wingspan in general prospect terms, but the fact that there’s a conversation to be had is so promising for Thiero.

An outcome near either of their peak seasons would cement Thiero as the steal of the draft, based on his current predicted draft range starting in the late first round. In fact, I believe it would indicate him topping out as one of the 40–50 best players in the league at one point. If he were a year younger, I would have ranked him in the top three of this class with ease.

Final Ranking: 7th

Nile 2025 NBA Draft Board

Thank you.

Nile!