2025 NBA Draft Editor's Notes: Volume One
With the 2025 NBA Draft cycle now well under way, here are five players who deserve more No Ceilings spotlight: Dylan Harper, Nolan Traore, Mackenzie Mgbako, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and Adou Thiero.
The dust is starting to settle on the early portions of the NBA, international, and collegiate basketball schedules. Some of the players who were expected to play major roles in the 2025 NBA Draft cycle have cemented themselves as top prospects, while others have rapidly risen up from the shadows to stake their own place at the table. We here at No Ceilings have been covering some of these prospects for years, and have been focusing on the 2025 draft in particular for a few months now. However, as always, we can’t cover everybody in deep detail—there are a few players who haven't gotten as much of the No Ceilings written spotlight as others.
Now, as we near the end of 2024, I figured that it was time to revive this concept of Editor’s Notes for the first time this draft cycle, as I review the details in the margins and talk about some of my favorite prospects in the 2025 NBA Draft class. Simply put, I have some notes. Let’s dive right in, starting with one of the superstars who will expect to hear his name very early on the first night of the upcoming draft.
Dylan Harper
No, Dylan Harper is not exactly an under-the-radar prospect, and we’ve talked about him a decent amount already on this here website. Selfishly, though, I’ve only gotten to talk about him briefly in our most recent Mock Draft post.
Some of the players I’ve covered in Editor’s Notes in the past required a bit of explanation for why I was writing about them, and why I was writing about them at that moment. This one is a lot simpler: it’s just fun to watch Dylan Harper play basketball.
Also, he’s really good at it:
His offensive output is elite by any measure that you could choose—Harper is averaging 23.5 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game against 2.3 turnovers per game, with 52/36/76 shooting splits. The one issue that you could point to offensively, namely the jumper, looks much better when you dig into the numbers; Harper grades out in the 46th percentile overall as a jump shooter but that’s dragged down by his high volume of jumpers off-the-dribble; he ranks in the 88th percentile overall on catch-and-shoot looks, and in the 96th percentile when unguarded. He’s not bad at shooting off the dribble by any means; those looks are just more difficult to knock down, and he’s still more than good enough to force defenses to pay attention when he tries to get to those shots.
Everything else offensively is just a buffet of wonders. Harper has a great handle overall but a particularly great hesi; he is constantly throwing defenders off-rhythm with the aplomb of an NBA superstar and the control of a much more seasoned player. Most freshmen take time to adjust to the speed of the college game; Harper is one of the extremely rare few who not only reads the game faster than anyone else but also makes them adjust to his pace. He’s exceptional at getting to the rim and shoots 71.4% when he gets there; that’s a big man number, not a 23-points-per-game freshman guard number.
He’s also good on the other end of the floor, though I have to admit that I was not as impressed by the defensive film as I thought I would be. To be clear, he’s still a good defender, especially for a first-year college player, but he’s not elite on that end in the way that Cooper Flagg is, or his own father Ron Harper was. Dylan Harper is more of a shutdown corner type of defender than a defensive playmaker type. He’s better on-ball defensively than off-ball; he can get up into his opponent’s jersey and make them uncomfortable one-on-one, but his help defense is more touch-and-go. All of his steals this year have come from playing the passing lanes—he’s not the type of defender who will rip the ball away from his matchup. Harper’s screen navigation is better than most prospects his age who are carrying his kind of offensive burden, but he’s late on three-point closeouts more often than you would like.
Ultimately, I came away from my Harper film deep dive feeling slightly worse (but still positive) about his defense and feeling much better about his offense. Harper’s been #2 on my board for a while now, but I’m close to putting Harper and Flagg in the same tier at the top of the 2025 NBA Draft class. I would be stunned if Harper goes #1 overall, but I’m starting to think of this as a two-man draft at the top rather than just an extended game of Capture the Flagg.
Nolan Traore
This has not been the kind of start to the season that Nolan Traore or his believers would have hoped to see. As one of those aforementioned believers, I figured that I needed to explain myself a bit—and also explain why I haven’t quite given up hope just yet.
The reason to hold onto hope with Traore is the playmaking. His shooting has been ice-cold for the second straight season, which is certainly the leading cause for concern. I can’t pretend that I’m not concerned by the shooting; it’s hard to find much in the way of positives there with his 34/23/72 shooting splits. However, Traore is still averaging 4.7 assists per game against 2.6 turnovers per game, and running the offense at a high level for a Saint-Quentin team with playoff hopes. He’s a good but not great athlete by NBA standards; however, his ability to mix up speeds and throw defenses off with his hesis is well beyond his age. The shot has a bit of a slingshot motion to it, but it’s nowhere near as broken as the numbers might indicate. When you combine that and his passing with his ability to at least GET to the rim (even if he’s not finishing there at the level you would want to see), there’s still reason to hope that he’ll figure enough out scoring-wise to make things work:
The defense is a concern with Traore, as it is for all smaller guards, but there’s reason for hope there. Traore competes defensively, and his good foot speed and lateral mobility make up for the occasional ball-watching moments that all young guards have. He’s not a defensive playmaker, which certainly hurts his case, but he has more than enough to at least be solid on that end of the floor. Defensive metrics have a lot more noise in them than offensive metrics, but for what it’s worth, he does grade out pretty well in some of the advanced defensive numbers—he’s currently in the 77th percentile defensively, per Synergy, which certainly helps to bolster his case. Even with the questions about his size, Traore can be a part of a defensive scheme. He’s also 6’3” instead of 6’0”, which also helps; there’s a world of difference between being a “below-average” guard size-wise and being tiny (all in comparison to the giants in pro basketball, of course).
Once upon a time, Cam Payne was the 14th pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. The 6’3” teenage point guard out of Murray State happened to get drafted in the middle of an excellent run in that draft (seriously—most drafts don’t have a run of decade-long NBA players like Myles Turner-Trey Lyles-Devin Booker-Cam Payne-Kelly Oubre Jr.-Terry Rozier all in a row after the Top 10 picks), which only magnified the attention paid to Payne’s struggles early on in his NBA career. He took care of the ball and made his free throws, but there wasn’t any reason to believe that he would have a decade-long NBA career given his shooting woes—especially after the Thunder traded him to the Bulls as part of a trade package for Taj Gibson and Doug McDermott. Still, Payne continued to work on his shot, and he started to blossom in his second season in Phoenix. Now, he’s the eighth man in the rotation for a very good Knicks team as their veteran bench guard (somehow, Cam Payne is the oldest player who has gotten minutes on the Knicks this year).
Why am I going in-depth on Cam Payne’s career? Well, I think that Nolan Traore is primed to be a very similar NBA player. I might be cooling on the notion of Traore as a potential superstar, but I still fully believe in him as an NBA-caliber game manager. Maybe that means that he comes off the bench far more often than he starts, as Cam Payne has done for pretty much his entire NBA career. Maybe Traore figures out the shot early on, or maybe he is athletic enough to get to the rim consistently against NBA competition. Even if he isn’t, though, I’m pretty confident with a median outcome of Cam Payne if I’m picking later in the lottery. It might mean Traore is picked in the 11-15 range on Draft Night instead of in the Top 5 like his preseason hype would have predicted, but he is still an excellent game manager who reads the floor at a high level and mixes speeds and dribble cadences like a veteran.
Maybe I’m just holding on to the anchor of the sinking ship that is Nolan Traore’s current draft stock, but I refuse to give up the ghost just yet. There are worse bets to make than betting on a competent, game-managing point guard who still has the same astronomical ceiling that he did before the season began if he can put it all together.
Mackenzie Mgbako
It would be fair to say that Mackenzie Mgbako’s first five games last season were an unmitigated disaster. After a high school career that saw him finish as the #10 prospect in his class, per RSCI, Mgbako struggled mightily against mostly low-level competition—with a loss to the UConn Huskies muddying that “low-level competition” narrative. Still, Mgbako averaged 5.0 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.4 assists per game on hideous 32/8/100 shooting splits (no, that middle number is not missing a digit—Mgbako made just one of his first 13 triples for a brutal 7.7% mark from distance). His 2024 NBA Draft stock was essentially dead on arrival, and it was no surprise that he returned to Indiana for his sophomore season even after he closed the season on a much better note.
It would be fair to say that Mackenzie Mgbako’s first five games this season were an incredible success. He started off the campaign with a 31-point, nine-rebound outing where he went 13-of-17 from the floor and 4-of-5 from deep. Even with a bit of a dud against Louisville in the fifth game, Mgbako still put up 16.6 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game on sparkling 55/53/94 shooting splits through his first five contests.
So…which one is the real Mackenzie Mgbako? Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to tell. He’s still maddeningly inconsistent; Mgbako put up 25 points on 14 shots in a national TV game against Providence, then scored four points on 2-7 shooting two games later against Miami (OH). His most recent game was a two-point outing in which he only played 13 minutes due to foul trouble—in a game where the Hoosiers desperately needed his offense.
Ultimately, I think that Mgbako’s early-season success this year is closer to the kind of player that he will become at the NBA level. He’s been pretty much exclusively an off-ball player this year, and that’s been to his benefit—Mgbako’s fourth-most common play type last season was as the pick-and-roll ball-handler, per Synergy, and he ranked in the 40th percentile on those plays. This year, he’s run just five pick-and-rolls all season, trading in those looks for spot-ups and finishing more plays in transition.
Given his athletic tools, size, and great touch, Mgbako as an off-ball wing makes a lot more sense to me as a value proposition than Mgbako as a play initiator. Pretty much every NBA team could use a 6’8” wing who can shoot, keep the ball moving, run in transition, and play solid defense. His potential might not be as intriguing as the Top 10 in the class version of Mgbako that he was heading into Indiana, but teams picking late in the first round should be intrigued by what he can provide.
Just don’t look at any of the hot takes after his first five NBA games.
Ryan Kalkbrenner
For each of the last four seasons, Ryan Kalkbrenner has essentially been the poster boy for “if only he played 20 years ago”—a title that he battled Drew Timme for until Timme finished up his college career. It’s become a cliché to talk about back-to-the-basket big men like that; the NBA is just too fast-paced and shooting-focused for a seven-footer to post up on the low block and take defenders to task, Al Jefferson-style. Even with his ridiculous 49-point, 11-rebound, three-block performance to open the season, Kalkbrenner has frequently been dismissed as the next Drew Timme whose game simply won’t translate to the next level.
Here’s the thing, though: Kalkbrenner is much closer to being Walker Kessler than he is to being Drew Timme; after massively underrating Kessler prior to the start of his NBA career, I don’t want to make the same mistake again.
Kalkbrenner’s traditional numbers are no joke. He’s averaging 17.4 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 2.5 blocks per game on insane 72/33/76 shooting splits—he’s leading the Big East in Field Goal Percentage for the fourth straight year and blocks for the third straight year, and he is currently leading the conference in rebounds as well.
The advanced numbers, however, make the traditional stats look quaint. Kalkbrenner isn’t just great by the advanced stats—he’s historically good. As of right now, Ryan Kalkbrenner holds the NCAA career record for Offensive Rating, at 133.8 per sports-reference. He’s currently eighth in the NCAA in Box Plus-Minus for his career; his only seasons outside of the Top 10 in that stat were his rookie year and his sophomore year—and he finished 12th in the NCAA and first in the Big East in that sophomore season. He just passed Etan Thomas for the Big East career record in Win Shares, and it’s not just an accumulation thing—Kalkbrenner is second in Win Shares per 40 Minutes at .234, behind Donovan Clingan and just ahead of Jae Crowder and Otto Porter (though that WS/40 leaderboard on sports-reference only goes back to 2009-10; Thomas beats out both Clingan and Kalkbrenner on a rate basis). If you’re a PER person, Kalkbrenner is second in the Big East for his career with a 27.6 PER; after ranking first, second, and third in his sophomore through senior year campaigns, Kalkbrenner is all the way down to fifth in his super-senior year.
Per Synergy, Kalkbrenner grades out in the 99th percentile offensively overall, the 99th percentile in transition, the 98th percentile in the halfcourt, the 98th percentile in at-rim finishing, and the 97th percentile on post-ups. By any metric that you can find, Kalkbrenner is one of the most efficient offensive players in the history of college basketball. He’s much worse defensively, though—he only grades out in the 77th percentile on that end of the floor, per Synergy, and is only (checks notes) third in the Big East in Defensive Box Plus-Minus this season after leading the conference last year. The traditional box score numbers look great for Kalkbrenner; the advanced numbers are literally record-setting.
Last year was Year Three of having Kalkbrenner right on the border of my Top 60; it’s been easy for me to push him down my board in favor of other prospects, but he’s also been good enough that I couldn't quite drop him out of draftable range entirely. This year, I’m being a bit more proactive. I’ve bumped him up into the mid-40s on my board, and I don’t expect him to drop any lower than that for the rest of the season. Even if his game isn’t exactly in line with where the NBA is going, there are enough teams who could use Kalkbrenner’s interior presence that I expect him to at least get a cup of coffee in the NBA. Quite frankly, I would be surprised if he doesn’t stick around for longer than a cup of coffee—the list of NBA teams that could use 12 minutes a game from a historically efficient offensive center who is also a defensive positive in a drop scheme is quite long. Given that most players around the back half of the second round never even make the NBA, Kalkbrenner is a better bet than most in that range—at this point, it’ll take a lot to convince me otherwise.
Adou Thiero
Who would you have predicted to be the leading scorer for the Arkansas Razorbacks this season? Maybe you were all in on freshman superstar Boogie Fland, and you expected him to immediately seize control of the Arkansas offense and pour in buckets at a prodigious clip. Maybe you were a D.J. Wagner fan who was disappointed by his poor shooting last season, and you expected him to turn it around and start making his triples. Maybe you were a big-time Karter Knox believer, and you expected him to use his NBA-ready frame to bully smaller players down low while shooting the lights out from deep.
Now, be honest…
How many of you thought it would be Adou Thiero?
I was quite intrigued by the flashes I saw from Thiero last season at Kentucky, but almost all of that intrigue was with his defensive tape. Thiero’s high-flying athleticism was interesting in terms of his finishing, but I was expecting a “breakout” year from him to be something like 12 points, five rebounds, two assists, and a steal and a block per game, with great help defense and a lot of looks from dump-offs while he’s in the dunker spot plus some scoring chances from running the floor in transition to make up for his lack of a jump shot.
Instead, Thiero is averaging 18.0 points, 5.9 rebounds, 2.1 steals, and 2.0 assists per game on 62/24/67 shooting splits. He’s taken a majority of his shots right around the basket and has converted them at an insane clip—Thiero is shooting 73.3% at the rim so far this season, good for the 90th percentile per Synergy and more in line with the efficiency you’d expect to see from a low-volume center instead of a high-volume guard. He’s also getting to the line 6.7 times per game; defenses are forced to either let him get to the rim or hack him to try to prevent it, and even hacking him isn’t always a viable strategy. He turns defense into offense as well as anyone in college basketball; if you throw a lazy pass, Thiero will find it and dash to the other end of the floor before you can gather yourself:
I don’t want to pretend that the shot is a non-issue; even though it’s been encouraging that he’s been more willing to take them this season, it’s hard to paper over a 23.8% mark from distance if you’re not a rim-running big. However, plenty of NBA teams over the past few seasons have found room for athletic non-shooters who are lob threats on one end and defensive menaces on the other—see Gary Payton II and Nets-edition Bruce Brown. Thiero’s shot isn’t broken by any means; if he can shoot 34.4% from deep on 2.8 3PA per game, as Bruce Brown has over the last two seasons, that would be more than enough. Even if he’s a complete non-factor shooting-wise like Payton II, though, Thiero is more than good enough at the rest of the complementary skills to make up for it; you can’t paper over that 23.8% three-point clip entirely, but you can certainly compensate for it by ranking in the 96th percentile on cuts.
Thiero is firmly in the first round for me at the moment; even if the shot never comes around, he’s gotten to the point where he does enough on offense to maintain the playing time that he’ll earn with his defense. If the shot does come around, though, look out. Given that most people did not expect this kind of offensive breakout from him heading into this season, I’m more than willing to believe that he can take it to another level beyond this one.