2025 NBA Draft Editor's Notes: Volume Two
Here are five Sweet Sixteen players who deserve more of a written spotlight as the 2025 NBA Draft approaches: Derik Queen, Labaron Philon, Tahaad Pettiford, Tyrese Proctor, and Alex Condon.
The 2025 NBA Draft class is really starting to take shape, as the NBA and international leagues near their conclusion, and March Madness is well underway. We here at No Ceilings have been covering some of these prospects for years and have been focusing on the 2025 class 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 spotlight as others.
Now, with the Sweet Sixteen starting tonight, I figured that it was time for another edition of Editor’s Notes 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 has already cemented his name in March Madness lore and now seeks to solidify his spot near the top of the draft.
Derik Queen
Rowan already covered the Derik Queen experience in person for No Ceilings earlier this week, but I couldn’t resist the excuse provided by Maryland’s Sweet Sixteen run to write about one of my favorite prospects in the class. Basketball fans who only check in with college basketball in March are now familiar with Queen after his buzzer-beater to send Maryland to the Sweet Sixteen, but draft maniacs have long been familiar with Queen’s game.
Let’s start with the positives in his game—there are plenty of them to point to when it comes to the star freshman. Queen is a gifted offensive player, especially when it comes to scoring in the paint. Overall, he grades out in the 78th percentile offensively per Synergy, and he is effective both in halfcourt (80th percentile) and transition (63rd percentile) settings. He’s especially dangerous around the basket; Queen ranks in the 85th percentile in at-rim scoring, converting 67.1% of his shots near the basket. He is particularly devastating on the offensive glass—Queen averaged 2.4 offensive boards per game and put them back up and in at a prodigious rate, grading out in the 95th percentile in his finishing efficiency on the offensive glass. He’s not the best vertical athlete, but he does a great job of making space for himself around the rim and finishing through contact—when Queen gets the ball near the basket, it’s all but a guarantee that he will find a way to put the ball through the hoop:
Despite being undersized for a pure center at 6’10”, Queen has an NBA-ready 246-pound frame. He has clearly put in the effort in the weight room after being a bit on the pudgier side heading into college, and he certainly will not be bullied down low like most young big men who are on the skinnier side.
I’ve gotten this far into this section about Queen without mentioning my favorite part of his game: his passing. I’ve long been a sucker for big men who can pass, and Queen has passing chops…and then some. Good passing vision is almost a prerequisite for an offensively-tilted big man in today’s NBA, but Queen is particularly adept at drawing double teams and slinging the ball out to open shooters. His handle is also elite for his size, and he’s perfectly happy to take his man off the dribble if the situation calls for it. Give Queen too much space, and he’ll hit the open man in the corner or slip the ball through to a cutter; close off his passing lanes, and he’ll put his man under the basket and get an easy two. Dealing with Derik Queen is a case of choosing the best of a bunch of bad options, and most of the time, he’ll make you feel like you chose wrong:
Granted, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with Queen’s game. There are valid concerns with his size; as a 4-5 tweener, he’ll need the right frontcourt partner to fully unlock his game. Queen grades out well by some defensive metrics, ranking in the 93rd percentile overall defensively per Synergy, and he does have remarkably quick hands that allow him to rack up steals and cause chaos when it comes to playing passing lanes and preventing entry passes. Still, his shot-blocking leaves something to be desired, and he’s not quite mobile enough to be a 4 in most schemes—which limits his upside on the defensive end of the floor. On the offensive side of things, Queen turns the ball over more than you might like for someone who is most effective with the ball in his hands. He also has a long way to go as a shooter; Queen ranks in just the 12th percentile on jump shots per Synergy, and he has connected on just six of his 31 three-point attempts.
As I’ve watched Queen over the course of the season, though, I find myself more and more willing to look past the warts. The shot needs work, sure, but there’s also cause for optimism. Queen gets to the line at a healthy rate (with a Free Throw Rate of .545 free throws per FG attempt and 5.9 FTA per game), and he knocks them down at a 75.5% clip—which suggests that his touch is better than his brutal three-point percentage indicates. The turnover numbers are a bit concerning but understandable for someone with his offensive role. I’m more worried about his defensive fit than I am about anything on the offensive end, but Queen can provide value defensively. He’s not a liability. He could be an awkward fit in the wrong kind of scheme, but he has the tools to be a contributor on that end of the floor if he gets the right frontcourt partner.
Ultimately, I have Queen in the top half of the lottery on my board, and I feel pretty great about it. There’s enough for him to fall back on defensively and a high enough floor offensively that I feel pretty comfortable with him being a valuable rotation player at worst. If he ends up on a team that can provide him with defensive coverage in the frontcourt and a bunch of shooters to spray the ball out to, though, watch out. Queen has plenty of avenues to being one of the five best players in this class, and I would be willing to bet that he finds one of those paths.
If not, he’ll always have that buzzer-beater.
Labaron Philon
In my mind, Labaron Philon has been one of the most fascinating and confounding players to evaluate in this class. The strengths are easy to see; he’s one of the best guards in the class when it comes to scoring inside the arc, he’s a solid passer who takes great care of the ball, and he’s an absolute demon defensively.
The weaknesses are also easy to see. He’s a poor three-point shooter and is frustratingly offensively inconsistent. His SEC tournament run tells that story pretty succinctly, as Philon put up 21 points on 14 shots with four assists and three steals in the quarterfinals against Kentucky…only to put up a 1-of-9 stinker the next night against Florida. Philon was all but invisible in Alabama’s March Madness opener, taking just one shot from the floor and two from the charity stripe for one point in 28 minutes in a 90-81 Alabama win over Robert Morris—a win that was closer than it needed to be for the Crimson Tide.
I’ve changed my mind about Philon a few times throughout this draft cycle, but I’ve had him pretty comfortably in the first round on my board for a little while now. The offensive weaknesses are concerning, but his finishing numbers and game-management abilities should be enough to sustain him while he works on his shot. He’ll earn his playing time on the defensive end anyway, and there’s a lot to love about his game on that end of the floor. Philon fights over screens as well as any guard in this class—a rare defensive trait among even the best freshmen. He’s adept at generating turnovers both as an on-ball defender and as a ball-hawk in the passing lanes, without gambling too much and letting himself get beaten on backdoor cuts. It’s difficult for me to imagine most coaches seeing Philon lock players up on the defensive end and not wanting to give him playing time:
Guards who can’t shoot are rapidly losing playing time in today’s NBA, and Philon will be no exception if he can’t make progress in that area. He won’t be able to earn more than spot minutes without a jumper, even with his prowess as an off-ball cutter (he ranks in the 81st percentile on cuts, per Synergy), and his 6’4” frame and lack of bulk at 177 pounds essentially requires him to at least have some on-ball juice as a scorer to let the rest of his game play up. I’m normally wary of guards who shoot under 30% from three-point range—so it’s particularly surprising to me that I’m as willing to buy into Philon’s future as I am at this point. He checks nearly all of the non-shooting boxes that I look for in guards on the offensive end, and his defense has the potential to be special. Even if the shot never fully comes around, Philon can make enough of an “everything else” case that I would be happy to take the bet on his NBA future.
Tahaad Pettiford
Johni Broome might be the most heralded player on the Auburn Tigers, but Auburn’s best player in the NCAA Tournament so far has been Tahaad Pettiford. The freshman guard has been electric off the bench all season long, and he’s heating up at just the right time.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room for Pettiford’s NBA case, just to get it out of the way. Tahaad Pettiford is listed at 6’1” and 175 pounds, per Sports-Reference, and both of those numbers feel generous. He doesn’t make up for it as an excellent point-of-attack defender like some small guards do, either. Pettiford does at least put in the effort on that end, which is more than some do, but he gets leveled by opposing screens and rarely holds up on drives to the basket, even against other small guards. That lack of size isn’t just an issue for him defensively, either; Pettiford finished just 48% of his shots at the rim this season, per Synergy. He does have good bounce for his size (there are plenty of players with six-plus inches of height on Pettiford who haven’t gotten to five dunks on the year), but he often has to resort to some wild acrobatics to even get a window to finish. It’s impressive when the shots go down, but it’s hard to make a living in the paint on circus shots. His low Free Throw Rate (.273) doesn’t help matters on that front.
With all of that out of the way…I’m still buying Tahaad Pettiford stock. He’s a microwave scorer who can pour in buckets from the mid-range and beyond the arc. In addition to being one of the best shooters in the class, Pettiford is also a great passer, which makes it easier to envision him continuing to be a great combo guard off the bench at the NBA level as he’s been for Auburn this season.
It feels stupid to say this, but people say that you can’t teach size for a reason. I’ve held off on putting Pettiford in the first round on my board because the size concerns with him are legitimate. If only he and Labaron Philon could do a fusion dance, Dragon Ball Z-style—that player would either be one of the most complete guards in the draft or a short, non-shooting, non-defending guard who I wouldn’t have to puzzle over for thousands of words.
Looking beyond pipe dreams, though, there’s plenty to like about Pettiford’s game on the offensive end. The other side of the floor will always be an issue, but a defensively-tilted team could cover for his holes and leave him with room to operate. As Creighton just saw in the Round of 32, Tahaad Pettiford with room to operate offensively is a dangerous situation for an opposing defense to try to defuse.
Tyrese Proctor
It wouldn’t be too difficult to argue that nobody has boosted their draft stock more in the tournament to this point than Tyrese Proctor. The Duke junior has been absolutely torching the nets in the tournament so far, knocking down 13-of-16 three-pointers through Duke’s first two games.
I’ve written about Tyrese Proctor before in a previous edition of Editor’s Notes, and it’s been fascinating to me to follow his evolution as a player since then. He’s continued his upward trajectory as a jump shooter, ranking in the 94th percentile on jump shots per Synergy, and he’s mostly maintained the steps forward he took as a finisher (shooting 51% inside the arc this season after finishing last season at 52% on two-pointers). The shot, once a swing skill for Proctor, has become his main selling point:
Interestingly enough, though, Proctor has stepped into more of an off-ball role this season despite his passing chops being the main selling point of his prospect hype heading into his college career. After Proctor led Duke in assists in each of his first two seasons, it seemed like all but a given to me that he would be Duke’s primary point guard in Year Three. Instead, Proctor took a backseat to Duke’s star freshmen Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel in that department—Proctor finished fourth on the team in assists behind those two and Tulane transfer Sion James.
It’s not like Proctor’s passing abandoned him by any means. He still finished the year with an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.2, and he can still sling the ball all over the court when it comes his way. Proctor’s offensive growth outside of his point guard skills, though, makes him an easier fit. With his size at 6’5”, Proctor was always big enough to play at either guard spot. Now, though, he has the complementary offensive game to match. He might not reach the heights of his pre-college lottery projections, but his game now is more versatile than it has ever been before. If he plays at even an average level for the rest of the tournament, he will get looks in the 2025 NBA Draft. If he maintains a little heat after the first two rounds, though, Tyrese Proctor could be the next prospect in a long line of players to ride a March Madness hot streak into the first round of the draft.
Alex Condon
The main story for the Florida Gators so far has been the exemplary play of Walter Clayton Jr., but he might not be the first Gator selected in the 2025 NBA Draft. That honor has a very good chance of going to Australian big man Alex Condon, who has taken a huge step forward in his sophomore season and could see his stock rise significantly with a big game or two during the tournament.
The appeal with Condon is pretty easy to see. There aren’t many 6’11” shot-blockers who knock down 34% of their three-point attempts like Condon did this season. Of that already small group, even fewer of them run the floor well enough to rank in the 90th percentile in transition per Synergy. He checks nearly all of the boxes that one would want to see from a modern-day NBA power forward:
Condon doesn’t do any one thing spectacularly well, but he is tailor-made to be the fifth starter for a team—like he was at Florida this season. He’ll have to prove that his 34% mark from three-point range was not a low-volume fluke; Condon averaged just 1.6 three-point attempts per game this season, and he shot 28.9% last season on only slightly lower volume (1.1 triples per game). His numbers from the free-throw line don’t help his case—Condon shot just 60.2% from the charity stripe on a much larger number of attempts (4.9 FTA per game), and he is at 63.1% from the line throughout his college career.
If the shooting is a mirage, the case for Alex Condon is a lot less interesting. Still, he’s a good athlete for his size, a menace on the offensive glass (Condon has ranked sixth and eighth in the SEC in offensive rebound percentage in his first two college seasons), and a great weakside shot-blocker. In theory, he’s exactly the kind of power forward that teams with offensively-tilted centers (like whoever drafts Derik Queen, for example) would want as their main guy’s frontcourt running mate. Condon will do the dirty work on both ends of the floor, space things out offensively, and be perfectly happy to put in that dirty work without getting fed the ball.
I’m still not all the way sold on his shot, but it’s hard not to get excited about Condon’s potential skillset. If he can maintain his 34% mark from three-point range on a higher volume of attempts, Alex Condon could be the kind of power forward unicorn that many teams are looking for, and he could easily end up as one of the biggest steals of the 2025 NBA Draft.