2025 NBA Draft Big Board: Derik Queen, V.J. Edgecombe rise amongst prime 100 prospects | USAEMALL.com

With March Madness quickly approaching, it’s worth updating The Athletic’s 2025 NBA Draft Big Board. And there is still a lot on the line as the season progresses toward its conclusion.

Outside of Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper, there are precious few prospects in this class without significant questions right now. NBA evaluators are not particularly enthused about what the back half of the lottery could bring, with that No. 6 to No. 20 range considered a massive jumble of players all in similar tiers. There are even questions about the value of Nos. 3, 4 and 5.

All of this makes the draft lottery an even higher-stakes game than normal. Several teams are scratching and clawing their way into the lottery odds picture to join the Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets and Utah Jazz. New Orleans has had a season from hell in terms of injury and is sitting in the No. 3 position even with Zion Williamson playing. Toronto has dealt with its own injuries, but more than that, the Raptors just can’t figure out how to guard anyone and sit No. 5. Along with them in the Eastern Conference, Brooklyn, Chicago and Philadelphia are engaged in one of the funniest situations I can remember in a while.

One of the Nets, Bulls, Sixers or Raptors is going to have to make the Play-In Tournament. I’m not convinced any of those teams necessarily have much interest in doing so. The Sixers’ season is rapidly speeding toward a cliff, with Joel Embiid now exploring his options with his injured knee. They also lose their draft pick if they finish outside of the top six, sending it to Oklahoma City. That means they’re engaged in a higher-stakes game than all the others and probably should pull the ripcord on Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey sooner rather than later. The Bulls just traded Zach LaVine and received very little present value in return. The Nets traded veterans off their roster all season but might be too competently run under Jordi Fernandez’s stewardship to tank. The Raptors are probably the best of these teams if the Sixers shut down their stars, but they’re also letting Brandon Ingram take his time returning from injury and are 23 games under .500 right now. The team that earns the No. 10 seed may end up with 50 losses.

Flagg’s value as a franchise cornerstone means these teams should still be doing everything they can to position themselves for the best odds. But if you’re the team that finishes at No. 6, I’m not convinced yet that this class will provide the normal, commensurate value with such a selection. I also have a healthy degree of skepticism on the depth of this class, as sources across the college basketball ecosystem continue to discuss how the environment will be more flush with cash than ever before to persuade older players to stick around on campus.

In that vein, here’s where my Top 100 stands as we approach that beautiful month of March. I would expect a healthy degree of movement throughout the next three months, and I would also expect to see several of the players listed here fall off the board and return to school after receiving hefty financial commitments from their universities. As always, here’s the way the Big Board works:

• It does not take team fit into account. I give a bit of a bump to players I think will be successful in multiple schemes. I also tend to give a bump to guys who seem to be winning players who can defend multiple positions, play well within a team defensive concept, knock down shots and play with great processing speed. The latter quality is the most important one for non-stars to have for NBA playoff success.

• I get input and information from NBA executives, college coaches, agents, scouts and other evaluators. Sometimes, those exchanges are about a prospect’s background and off-court habits. Sometimes, they’re about his work ethic. Other times, they’re conversations about whether we think a guy can play or to whom they might compare in the NBA. These conversations happen daily, but at the end of the day, this is my ranking. While it is reflective of the general tenor of NBA teams, it’s not a consensus board.

• At this stage of the process, as is true every year, I do not include freshmen who’d be ranked outside of the top 50. It’s very early for that to occur, and realistically, freshmen whom I have ranked outside of the top 50 should probably go back to school.

• Ages on the board are as of draft day in 2025 (June 25); heights listed are per official team and school websites.

Cooper Flagg | 6-9 freshman wing | Duke | 18 years old | No. 1

It’s hard to overemphasize how dominant Flagg has been in ACC play. The youngest draft prospect in the class, Flagg would be my current pick for national player of the year at just 18 years old. In conference play, he’s averaging 22 points, seven rebounds and four assists with a two-to-one assist-to-turnover ratio. He’s shooting 53 percent from the field, 44 percent from 3 and 85 percent from the line. He’s still one of the best defensive players in the country, and his competitive fire showcases itself at every moment possible. With all due respect to Auburn and Flagg’s primary competition for national player of the year, Johni Broome, Duke is the team I would pick to win the title if I had to choose one today.

GO DEEPER

Cooper Flagg is on the clock

We’ve never seen a player this young dominate college basketball quite like this, with this ruthless efficiency, sharp passing and dominant shot creation from all three levels as a wing. Zion Williamson was unstoppable going to the rim, and Anthony Davis was as good defensively as a prospect has ever been in college hoops. But Flagg’s ability to combine all of this into one player who can get to his spots from all three levels is unfathomable. The absurd thing is that he keeps getting better as the season goes on.

I wrote at length earlier this month about Flagg. Those thoughts remain true. He’s the clear No. 1 pick in the draft, and there will be no competition. The NBA Draft Lottery on May 12 is officially the Capture the Flagg sweepstakes, and whoever gets that pick is getting a franchise-altering talent whose presence will change the trajectory of their organization. He’s elite on the court, but beyond that, his competitive character, toughness and sole desire to win basketball games will give you a culture to build your organization around for the coming decade.

GO DEEPER

How Cooper Flagg has cemented his status as 2025’s top draft prospect

V.J. Edgecombe | 6-5 freshman guard | Baylor | 20 years old | No. 4

Edgecombe has figured things out in Big 12 play even as Baylor stumbles as one of the more disappointing teams in the country. Over his last 13 games, he’s averaging 17.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists while playing tough defense and shooting 47 percent from the field, 39 percent from 3 and 87 percent from the line. As Edgecombe’s shot has started to fall at a more consistent level — he was a 40 percent shooter off the catch in high school from 3 in both of his seasons at Long Island Lutheran — the rest of his game has blossomed. He’s become more consistent attacking the rim and finding different little ways into successful paint touches and scores.

That, along with the rest of the class continuing to live down to relative expectations, has vaulted him to the clear No. 4 spot. But questions persist about his game. Scouts are very interested to see how he’ll measure in Chicago at the NBA Draft Combine. Listed at 6-foot-5, most evaluators have a degree of skepticism that he hits that mark. On top of that, most of Edgecombe’s consistent sources of success this year have come off the ball as opposed to being the primary playmaker. Questions remain about his left hand off the bounce. He also hasn’t dealt particularly well with heavy ball pressure when acting as a primary option.

Still, it’s hard to see Edgecombe as anything other than fairly safe in this class. He’s a terrific defender with all sorts of athleticism and quickness. He’s a serious playmaker on that end, averaging two steals per game to go with nearly one block per game on the season. He’s also extremely tough on the ball because of his athleticism and strength. It’s hard to go through his chest even though he’s not enormous. The jumper doesn’t always look consistent, but the ball goes in the hoop, and he’s an awesome free-throw shooter for being a freshman. It’s easy to envision Edgecombe getting early minutes just as a 3-and-D style guard, then allowing him to use that as a base to build the rest of the on-ball skills. Even if those need work, sources across basketball rave about his work ethic and effort levels.

Maybe he ends up just being a super high-end athlete who is a 3-and-D guard. If that’s the case, he probably wouldn’t return the commensurate value with the No. 4 pick. But if that’s really the worst-case scenario (and I think it is), with his upside for more given his truly elite athleticism that will place him in the top 5 percent of all NBA players, it’s probably worth going for it within the top five. I don’t expect Edgecombe to fall outside of that range on my final board given his successful close to the season.

Derik Queen | 6-10 freshman center | Maryland | 20 years old | No. 8

Maryland coach Kevin Willard recently made some statements to CBS Sports, saying that “if (Queen) was White and European, he’d be the first pick in the draft.” The last White European big man to be drafted in the top five was either Kristaps Porziņģis or Dragan Bender (depending on how you classify what the hope was positionally for Bender) a decade ago. Regardless of the perception publicly, we have evidence that European prospects are more doubted than American ones within NBA front offices. Luka Dončić won MVP of the EuroLeague, and teams still had enough purported questions to slide him down to No. 3. Alperen Şengün won MVP of the Turkish League at 18 years old and slid all the way down to No. 16 as a similar style player to Queen.

Willard’s comments were silly, but Queen is moving up boards now that he’s dominating games both inside and out again after a minor lull toward the middle of conference play.

He’s one of the most productive freshmen in the country, averaging nearly 16 points, nine rebounds and two assists while shooting 54 percent from the field. Those look like traditional big numbers, but Queen is anything but that. Yes, he’s a strong post player. But what makes him particularly intriguing to NBA teams is his ball skill. Queen is a fantastic ballhandler and shot creator from the perimeter for a big man. He can really control the ball at a level that most guys over 6-10 just can’t. He loves to face up and size his man up before hitting crossovers with some suddenness and hesitation, using shot fakes or pass fakes well to get his man off-balance. Beyond that, he really seems to understand how to use his frame to maintain advantages. Few bigs are better at any level — including the NBA — at using a hostage dribble to keep his man on his back and keep a four-on-five advantage for his team. 

He can get all the way to the rim to finish, where he’s relatively effective there given how much he’s self-creating his own shots there. But what makes Queen particularly interesting is his passing. He has terrific vision, but moreover, he really can pass on the move in the way NBA teams love to see. He passes off a live dribble with both his left and right hand which, again, is quite rare for a player this big. That gives him the ability to have quick reactions to double teams or to see mismatch advantage situations; he processes all of this quite rapidly and can manipulate defenders with his eyesight or his passing angles. Then, he’ll hit passes from creative overhead or underarm angles to find windows. This year, he’s averaging 2.1 assists per game, but that undersells his ability. If he proves he can stay on the court defensively and play 30 minutes per game, he could easily average five assists per game in the NBA.

Alas, the defense is where teams are concerned. Queen is going to be undersized for the center position, and he doesn’t have a ton of length to necessarily fall back on either. This is where Queen’s frame brings out the most concern. Maryland does a fairly excellent job of hiding him by pre-switching most ball-screen actions in the same way Purdue did when it had All-American Caleb Swanigan. Queen seems to struggle when he’s asked to go north-south closing out onto players. He’s not as big of an issue moving laterally, but it’s hard for him to close out and stop his momentum, or for him to get to the level in ball screens, stop, then recover. However, he’s also not quite as big as most effective drop-coverage ball-screen defenders in the NBA either, because he doesn’t quite take up a ton of space in those situations. I also wouldn’t call him a particularly active help defender around the basket. He has great hands but often chooses not to rotate across to contest as the last line.

Teams wonder what exactly the defensive role is. Can Queen continue to do incredible work on his body and slim down even further to play the four? Or maybe he can keep improving his positioning and willingness to contest and play the five? NBA sources and sources close to Queen have told The Athletic that Queen has taken his nutrition extremely seriously at Maryland this year and has done a fantastic job of keeping his weight down. Entering Maryland, he was over 260 pounds. Now, he’s in the 240-pound range and continues to make good decisions regarding his food.

Scouts bring up a lot of different names to compare Queen to, which is unsurprising given that he’s a polarizing archetype. Alperen Şengün comes up, as does Domantas Sabonis. More recently, the name I’ve heard most is Naz Reid because of his ability to handle the ball. The difference between those two is that Reid can really shoot the ball and Queen has not showcased that ability yet. That’s the next step in his development toward becoming a lethal player in the NBA. However, Reid’s ability to create is not dissimilar to Queen’s, as they’re both exceptionally comfortable handling the ball.

Overall, I’m a believer that Queen — who has been elite in basically every setting he’s ever been placed within, from high school at Montverde (Fla.) Academy to camps in front of scouts to McDonald’s All-American week now to college basketball — will just figure it out. Queen has been gifted with incredible overall feel for the game, and he always rises to the occasion and plays his best when it matters most.

Oklahoma’s Jeremiah Fears has had an up-and-down freshman season but looks like a first-rounder. (Matt Pendleton / Imagn Images)

Jeremiah Fears | 6-4 freshman guard | Oklahoma | 18 years old | No. 17

It’s been a bit of a roller-coaster season for Fears. A late reclassification from the recruiting class of 2025, Fears is still 18 years old and was a monster to begin the season. In his first 13 games, he averaged 18.1 points and 4.5 assists while shooting 50 percent from the field, 31 percent from 3 and 86 percent from the line to lead Oklahoma to a stunning unbeaten record and a top-15 ranking in the country. Then in his next 12 games, Oklahoma went 3-9 as SEC play heated up, and Fears’ game dropped off a cliff. He averaged 12 points and three assists while shooting just 36 percent from the field and 20 percent from 3.

The good news? His recent games have been better, as he posted a 22-point outing against a top-10 defense in Florida (although he had 14 points on 5-of-11 from the field in the first half before the game got completely out of hand) and then a 27-point, 10-assist showcase against Mississippi State. The latter was one of the best prospect games of the season. Fears showcased serious creativity off the bounce to get to pull-up jumpers from both 3 and from midrange. He dished out terrific passes, mostly down to his rollers around the rim. He lived at the foul line, taking 14 attempts.

Fears looked like a contender to be a top-five pick in the nonconference season, looked like he wouldn’t be a player in this draft in his next 12 games, then turned it around again. Unsurprisingly, that — along with his defense and shooting in general — has made him fairly polarizing for NBA teams. Some think he’s still a lottery-level player. Others are not quite as enthused about taking a project point guard who will essentially be position-locked into one role. You’d have to really buy into high-end, starter-level upside to take this bet because of how difficult the learning curve is for young guards. In the last decade, the only small guard — NBA personnel who have seen him in person do not expect Fears to measure at his listed 6-4 at the combine  — to have rookie success in the NBA is Trae Young. Assuming he’s in this draft, there’s a long way to go here given that Fears’ defense is a serious question, he struggles as a shooter and he hasn’t made a ton of shots at the rim this season.

I think the context surrounding Fears’ play is important, though. First, reclassified point guards are basically never good. You can look through the past of Deryck Thornton, Khristian Lander, Meechie Johnson, Kira Lewis, Devin Askew, Josh Primo, A.J. Lawson and Ashton Hagans to find a seriously mixed track record but essentially zero first-year success. Second, Oklahoma is entirely reliant upon him to do anything. The Sooners have very little secondary creation. The team does have pretty real floor-spacing around him but doesn’t have a particularly good rim-runner.

Where does all of that leave Fears? At the very least, NBA teams agree that if he enters the draft, he will be a first-round pick. Someone will take the plunge and try to develop him. A name that has come up often from teams is Monta Ellis, another extremely fast, young guard with a quick handle whom teams saw as a project entering the NBA. Ellis made over $100 million entering the league back in the mid-2000s, so they don’t mean that as a slight at Fears’ game. Ellis had a nine-year peak in which he averaged over 20 points and five assists while starting nearly 600 games. Fears’ development might be helped by returning to college basketball next year given the finances involved in the sport on that level now, but as long as he doesn’t tank the rest of the season, he should be well-positioned to be a top-20 pick with serious upside beyond that into the middle portion of the lottery if he performs well to close the year and in pre-draft workouts.

Other prospects

• One hot name among scouts right now is Arizona wing Carter Bryant, who has continued to take strides. His counting numbers of 6.3 points and 3.8 rebounds don’t jump off of the page, but he’s a 6-8 wing who has hit 36 percent of his 3s and been quite impactful on defense. When Bryant is on the court, Arizona beats its opponents by over 15 points per 100 possessions, per CBB Analytics. That’s second-best on the team behind Henri Veesaar, and it’s drastically ahead of third place. He’ll need to go into workouts and impress to be a one-and-done, but there is real buzz for Bryant as teams start looking at their boards and pinpointing potentially undervalued players.

San Diego State’s Miles Byrd is an intriguing wing prospect. (Darren Yamashita / Imagn Images)

• Another under-the-radar name is San Diego State wing Miles Byrd, whose defensive exploits this season have impressed a significant number of scouts who have been through Southern California. He has a well-rounded game, as he’s averaging 12.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 2.6 assists, two steals and a block per game. Defensively, he’s as active a wing as you’ll find, using his incredible reactivity and timing to disrupt whatever offenses are trying to do. He’s also taking about six 3s per game, and while only 32 percent of those have gone in, he has hit 84 percent from the line. Teams want to see him shoot in person, so he feels more like a player who tests the NBA Draft process as opposed to outright declaring. But as teams hunt for wings who can come in and give them long, active defense, Byrd fits the bill.

• Most NBA teams send American scouts over to Europe around the January-to-early-February window to cross-check what their international scouts are sending over. One name that popped up for most teams who went over this time was Joan Beringer, a 6-11 big man from France currently playing for Cedevita in the Adriatic League. Beringer just looks the part with his size. He has serious length and moves very well for a player this big on top of having vertical pop, but he’s also quite raw and will need some further time to develop. However, for someone this big, the main skillset that stood out was how well he caught the ball. He has a massive catch radius that allows him to catch everything in his area. Teams are excited to see and learn more, given that he has not been overly productive in either his time with the Under-18 French team this summer or at Cedevita. But the tools are clearly there, and Beringer has his front-office fans.

• A few other freshmen have built some standing within front offices. Duke’s Isaiah Evans took a while to build steam, but he’s made a ton of shots when he’s been on the court this season. Scouts mention that they think he’d likely be better off staying in school this year while he continues to build out his frame, work on his defensive disruption and develop his ball skills. However, teams are always on the lookout for long, athletic shooters, and Evans has real upside there. He comes in at No. 41. Auburn’s Tahaad Pettiford doesn’t have the same level of tools that Evans does, but it’s hard to ignore that he’s been awesome as a freshman this year in the biggest spots for the No. 1 team in the country. Every big game Auburn has played, it’s been Pettiford who has made the big shots. He had 21 points against Houston, 14 against Iowa State, 20 against Duke, 18 on Purdue, 14 against Alabama and 13 against Florida. That’s an awful lot of good work against top-10 teams. Where does that slot him in this mix? Good question, as some teams are just averse to 6-1 guards. But Pettiford has his fans given that few guards have been as consistently good against the best of the best this year.

• Some older players who have higher-end defensive pedigrees worth tracking: Georgetown’s Micah Peavy might be the player to watch this year if you’re looking for a late riser in the Toumani Camara mold who ends up coming out of nowhere to get picked. NBA teams love his defensive intensity and length, and he’s picked up the offensive game recently, too. Duke guard Sion James has been about as good as it gets at the point of attack on that end this year, and could hear his name called later in the draft. Finally, no player in the country has transformed his team’s defense this year like Florida’s Alijah Martin. His addition is, by far, the biggest reason that the Gators have gone from having a defense outside of the top 90 last season to having one inside the top 10 currently. He’s elite at the point of attack and does a fantastic job guarding up the lineup even at his size. He would be my pick for SEC Defensive Player of the Year right now, and he has worked his way back onto the radar for teams because of it, along with being a career 36.5 percent 3-point shooter on over 800 career attempts.

• Georgetown big man Thomas Sorber will miss the rest of the season with a foot injury. I have Sorber ranked quite highly at No. 16, and evaluators on the team side are somewhere in that No. 12 to No. 25 bucket on him depending on who you ask. He averaged 14.5 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game as a freshman with overall numbers that don’t look all that different from Queen’s. Evaluators also seem to buy Sorber’s jumper a bit more than Queen’s, even if Queen’s passing ability and overall perimeter game are believed to be more translatable.

But Sorber has been the subject of speculation in league circles as to whether he’ll end up in the 2025 draft. Sources close to the situation have stated throughout that he is no certainty to be in this class, and he and his family are in no rush for him to leave college. With Sorber having foot surgery, it’s also unclear how much of the pre-draft process he’ll be at full-strength for. None of this is to say Georgetown fans should unequivocally expect him back, but you can expect that this will be a logical decision, and those advising Sorber are not going to necessarily push him out the door.

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Photos of Cooper Flagg, V.J. Edgecombe and Derik Queen: Andrew Wevers , Lance King and G Fiume / Getty Images)