Cooper Flagg goes No. 1 overall to the Nets. Dylan Harper is selected No. 2 by the Wizards. Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Wasserman has released his latest 2025 mock draft in the aftermath of major AAU tournaments, NBA camps, FIBA competition and the Paris Olympics.
It will be difficult for any prospect to recreate the buzz that enveloped Victor Wembanyama in 2023. However, there’s no doubt Flagg is the target right now for all rebuilding teams, according to Wasserman.
Rounding out the top five are Ace Bailey (Trail Blazers), VJ Edgecombe (Pistons) and Drake Powell (Jazz).
Wasserman used FanDuel’s latest projected win totals for the draft order.
We have more from around the basketball world:
- The NBA will unveil the schedule for the second annual in-season tournament on Tuesday afternoon via NBA Today on ESPN, the network’s PR department tweets. Officially called the Emirates NBA Cup, the six groups for the early rounds of the tournament were revealed last month.
- NBA players had 5.25% of their salaries taken out of their paychecks for escrow payments for the 2023/24 season after the league finished its annual financial audit, Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic reports. The escrow program was established in 2011 to ensure that players don’t receive more than their contractual agreement with the team. The NBA normally takes out 10% of player’s salaries throughout the season to put into escrow to allow for the possibility that aggregate salaries outpace the players’ share of BRI, Vorkunov explains. It then returns money to players if its audit shows it had withheld too much.
- NBA officially struck rights deals with ESPN, Amazon and NBC that will provide the league with $77 billion over 11 years, beginning in 2025/26. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand details how those agreements came about and how it will impact the league.