2025 NBA Draft Editor's Notes: Volume Three
Here are five players who deserve more of a written spotlight on No Ceilings as the 2025 NBA Draft approaches: Liam McNeeley, Hugo Gonzalez, Will Riley, Otega Oweh, and Bogoljub Markovic.
The 2025 NBA Draft cycle is starting to go into overdrive, as March Madness and the end of the NBA regular season are both now in the rearview mirror. While some NBA teams are fighting for their playoff lives in the play-in tournament, plenty of NBA fan bases are looking ahead to the future—namely, which young prospects might be heading their team’s way.
Now, with the heart of the draft cycle upon us, I figure that it’s time for another edition of Editor’s Notes to review the details in the margins and talk about some of my favorite prospects in the 2025 NBA Draft class. I broke down some more players prior to the Sweet Sixteen in Volume Two, but now that draft season is really kicking into high gear, I had a few more thoughts that I wanted to get out of my mind and onto the page.
Simply put, I have some notes.
Let’s dive right in, starting with a first round/lottery candidate whose case has gotten quite a bit more polarizing in recent months.
Liam McNeeley
Liam McNeeley did not have the end to his regular season that his biggest fans might have hoped to see. After going down in early January with a high ankle sprain, he did not look like the same player once he returned in February. McNeeley averaged 13.6 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game on 43/38/85 shooting splits in 14 games prior to the ankle sprain. He averaged 15.5 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per game in the 13 games after that, but on hideous 35/27/88 shooting splits. Those poor splits include his 38-point barrage against Creighton on February 11th, where he shot 12-of-22 from the field, 5-of-10 from three-point range, and 9-of-10 from the line. Remove that game, and his efficiency falls even further to 31.6% from the floor and 23.2% from deep post-ankle injury.
His sample size of three-point shooting over the course of a full college season is limited enough that it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions; even the best shooters at the NBA level will have months-long (or even seasons-long) shooting slumps. Combine that with his injury, and I’m more willing to trust the sample size of the first half of McNeeley’s bifurcated season than the second half. The shot itself looks good, and he isn’t just taking advantage of the college line; McNeeley has parking lot range on his triples. Also, he’s far more than just a standstill threat. McNeeley is frequently in motion trying to get himself open off screens, and he’s a great trail shooter in transition. Add in his connective passing, and there’s a lot to like offensively, even if the overall shooting splits are disappointing:
McNeeley is no slouch on the defensive end either. He leverages his 6’7”, 210-pound frame well, and he’s adept at operating as a part of a defensive scheme. He’s not someone who leaps off the page on that end, but I would be surprised if he’s not at least decent on that end of the floor at the NBA level. His lack of defensive playmaking is concerning to me, though; McNeeley averaged just 0.6 steals and 0.2 blocks per game this season, and those numbers tend to translate more directly to the NBA level than any of the other main box score stats. However, his combination of fight and feel on that end of the floor leaves me optimistic about his defensive future.
With all of that said, there are plenty of warts with McNeeley on the offensive end, and I can’t say that I’m not concerned about at least a few of them. The most troubling part of his profile for me is his finishing at the rim. McNeeley shot just 45.6% at the rim this season, per Synergy, which puts him in just the 12th percentile. If he were an undersized shooting guard, I might be more willing to excuse that poor mark, but it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around a 6’7” forward with an NBA-ready frame being that bad around the basket.
McNeeley was somehow worse at shooting jumpers off the dribble—he connected on just five of his 33 off-the-dribble attempts, which put him in the sixth percentile. His complementary shooting, pick-and-roll prowess, and general connective passing are certainly helpful, but it’s hard for me to imagine him having much on-ball juice to tap into when factoring in his terrible finishing numbers and hideous off-the-dribble shooting. McNeeley can make the right pass if he’s forced off the three-point line, and that shouldn’t go underrated. I’m just struggling to figure out what else he’ll be able to do when teams take away the shot.
Usually, after doing a film deep dive on a prospect, I feel like I have a more solid handle on them for better or for worse. With McNeeley, though, I feel at least as confused as I did when I started. He’s a good catch-and-shoot threat with a great-looking shot who got cold at the wrong time in the wake of an injury—he’s also a terrible at-rim finisher and an even worse shooter off the dribble. He’s a solid defensive piece with size on the wing, but he’s not a defensive playmaker at all. He’s a good connective passer who makes the right reads most of the time, but he doesn’t have any of the ancillary skills that would lead me to believe he has more on-ball juice in him.
Ultimately, I have McNeeley at the tail end of my lottery, just as I did when I started this exercise. I believe in his shot both as a catch-and-shoot threat and as a shooter running off screens and movement. I believe in his ability to be a secondary or tertiary creator, and I believe he can be an above-average defender in most schemes.
Pretty much everything else about his game concerns me, though. If his greatest strengths weren’t in areas that are being valued more and more in the modern NBA, I would be very willing to sell off my stock in Liam McNeeley. As it is, I’m holding firm on his stock, but doing so makes me more uncomfortable than I would like.
Hugo Gonzalez
It’s been a strange season for Hugo Gonzalez, but the strangeness of it has not been particularly surprising. Despite Gonzalez’s talents, he has played limited minutes for Real Madrid this season. That isn’t exactly atypical for a teenager playing in one of the best professional leagues in the world. The real difference is that Gonzalez is not losing out on minutes due to poor defense or feel, like many young players—he’s only seeing the court in limited minutes because Real Madrid is ridiculously stacked this year, even by their own exceptionally high standards.
Seriously, just look at the roster for Real Madrid. The team is not only stacked with former NBA players, but plenty of those players are also in or near their primes. Just to give you an idea of their playing time crunch, Guerschon Yabusele left Real Madrid early in the season to sign with the Sixers and has played more minutes per game with Philly than he did with Real Madrid last season.
With that in mind, I’m not viewing Gonzalez through a Dragan Bender lens regarding his concerningly small amount of playing time. Gonzalez has a small role, sure, but having any role as a 19-year-old on this Real Madrid squad is impressive in and of itself. Even beyond the notion of Real Madrid not being as actively invested in giving him developmental minutes as his NBA squad would be, I would be surprised if Gonzalez ends up on a team that will relegate him to the sidelines in the manner that Real Madrid has this season.
In terms of the film we can evaluate, the place to start with Gonzalez is his defense. He has a sturdy 6’6”, 207-pound frame that has held up in one of the best professional leagues in the world, and his screen navigation defensively is up there with the best players in the class. He’s not a superlative defensive playmaker, but he does make plays in the passing lanes and can rise up for the occasional highlight-reel block. On the offensive end, he is a sensational cutter; Gonzalez averages an absurd 1.65 points per possession on cuts, which ranks in the 97th percentile per Synergy. Since he’s not often actively involved in the offense, it’s particularly crucial that he can generate offense when defenses forget to pay attention to him:
As I’m guessing is the case with many scouts, I would be more willing to be all-in on Gonzalez if he were as ready on the “3” portion of 3-and-D as he was on the “D” part. Gonzalez is shooting just 28.1% from three-point range, which is actually an improvement from his 24.1% mark last season. The shot itself looks good, and his free-throw numbers (73.9% from the line this year and 82.0% last season) indicate that his touch is probably better than his three-point percentage implies.
I’m impressed enough by his defensive acumen that I would be willing to take the bet on Gonzalez figuring out his shot. He’ll make defenses pay with his cutting if they abandon him completely beyond the arc, and he’s clearly already comfortable with playing a smaller role around elite talent on both ends of the floor. If he ends up going to a good team with a good shot doctor, he could be a key NBA rotation cog for many years to come.
Will Riley
Will Riley recently declared for the 2025 NBA Draft, per Jonathan Givony. It’s been a whirlwind of a season for the young Canadian guard, with some very high highs and very low lows. Fortunately for him, though, he had his ice-cold spell in the middle of the season instead of at the end like McNeeley, which makes it stand out less.
Riley is one of the best shot creators in the draft, with the ability at 6’8” to shoot over most people. He has an excellent handle to help him get to his spots, and he’s a scoring threat at all three levels when he gets to those spots. Riley ranks in the 90th percentile as an isolation scorer per Synergy, and it’s not hard to see why when breaking down the film:
Unlike many score-first guards, though, Riley is a solid and willing passer. His assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.86 is a nice high-level indicator of that, but the film is even more impressive. Riley doesn’t just make the easy passes—he frequently makes difficult cross-court reads and has an excellent grasp of when to continue to hunt his matchups versus when to give his teammates a window to attack:
The elephant in the room with Riley is his frame, which impacts him far more defensively than offensively. I was worried about Riley when he decided to reclassify before the start of the season because he was (and still is) incredibly skinny. Furthermore, he doesn’t have a wide enough frame for me to believe that he’ll be able to pull off a Giannis-esque (or even a Keegan Murray-esque) bulk-up. He’ll certainly add some degree of additional muscle in his future team’s weight and conditioning program, but I’m still concerned about him being pushed around defensively at the NBA level.
All that being said, though, I’m still buying all the Riley stock that anyone is willing to sell. As with McNeeley, I think that Riley’s season overall was more indicative of his talent than his ice-cold stretch, which happened in December for Riley (28.2% from the floor, 13.0% from three-point range) and tanked his season-long shooting splits. Riley shot 61.3% at the rim in spite of his frame concerns. Quite frankly, in terms of the defense, it’s also a lot easier to hide a poor 6’8” defender like Riley than it is to hide a shorter player who struggles defensively.
Will Riley won the Big Ten Sixth Man of the Year Award this season, and I think that’s the perfect role for him at the NBA level as well. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he earns at least a few Sixth Man of the Year votes when he establishes himself in the NBA.
Otega Oweh
Otega Oweh got off to a scorching hot start last season, and he rocketed up boards through the first few months of the season. He cooled off in a hurry after that, and he fell off some radars because of it. If you’re one of the people who hopped off the Oweh train last season, I encourage you to at least take a look at the ticket prices to get back on that train. His season wasn’t as jump-off-the-page stunning as last year’s start was, but Oweh quietly made some serious improvements in key areas and showed much more consistency in really encouraging ways.
Oweh took on a larger role with Kentucky this season than he did with Oklahoma last year, and he filled that role well. Oweh boosted his scoring from 11.4 points per game last year to 16.2 points per game this season, without a correlated drop in efficiency. He actually improved his efficiency on two-pointers slightly year-over-year, from 52.0% to 52.2%, which are both solid marks for a guard.
Oweh also took a really encouraging leap in terms of getting to the line and converting his free throws. He averaged 5.3 free-throw attempts per game this season after averaging 3.5 trips to the line per game last season, and he knocked them down at a 77.6% clip—well above his 64.5% mark from the line over his two seasons for the Sooners. His three-point percentage regressed slightly, but that was almost expected given how much his hot start last season carried his mark from distance. Oweh still shot a respectable 35.5% from deep this year on more attempts than last year.
When combined with his jump in efficiency from the line, Oweh’s shooting this year feels a lot more sustainable. All of that resulted in Oweh ranking in the 85th percentile overall offensively, per Synergy—that’s well above his 62nd percentile ranking last season.
Oweh’s NBA case will still be carried by his defense. He’s an elite defensive playmaker, and he’s built like a fire hydrant at 6’5” and 210 pounds. The real question for Oweh was whether or not he would find enough ways to consistently contribute on the other end of the floor. In my mind, he’s checked that box pretty emphatically. He’ll probably end up being a second round flyer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up making teams regret allowing him to fall off their radars after he went cold from distance last season.
Bogoljub Markovic
I should admit up front that I’ve been very skeptical about Bogoljub Markovic for most of this season. He’s had a very solid year offensively for KK Mega Bemax, but I worried that he would be too much of a big man tweener defensively to make much of an NBA impact.
After watching Markovic show out at Nike Hoop Summit, though, I’ve changed my tune. It’s not that he looks small on film at all, but he looks MASSIVE in person. More importantly, he consistently made the right reads on both ends of the floor throughout Hoop Summit, and he was clearly one of Team World’s leaders when it came to defensive assignments and communicating overall.
I don’t want to swing back too far in the opposite direction and buy in more than I should, but it’s hard to overlook how much more impressive Markovic was in person than I’d expected. I’ve slotted him in to the end of the first round on my board for now, which feels about right. Even beyond my biases, it’s hard to deny any near-7-footer who can shoot like Markovic can:
I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have concerns. Despite how tall he is, he’s still rail-thin. If he ends up playing any minutes at center in the NBA, it will require either a massive weight gain or a REALLY tiny small-ball lineup for his opponent. That being said, his feel impressed me almost as much as anyone’s at Hoop Summit. With his size, feel, and shooting touch, I’m willing to bet on him figuring out a way to be productive enough offensively to earn playing time as he grows into his body and figures things out on the other end of the floor. It will probably take time for him to figure out the tweener 4/5 dynamic at the NBA level, but I’ve gone from a skeptic to a believer when it comes to Bogoljub Markovic.