2025 NBA Draft Preview + Rookie Awards | Slam N Jam
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What is the focus of the 2025 NBA Draft Preview?
Welcome to the Saturday Slammin' Jam. I'm your host, Andrew Schlecht. With me, as always, is Alex Spears. Today, we have a special episode. We are talking about the 2025 NBA Draft, and we're talking about the current rookie class. And there is nobody better to talk about both of those things with than our guy, Sam Vecini. Sam, welcome back to the Slammin' Jam.
Truly, there is no show I enjoy doing more than this one. It is fun. I get my ass kicked in trivia every time. And it's just such an enjoyable, enjoyable experience. So I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad to get to chat with you.
Yeah, so we do these episodes a little differently because we just need to talk to Sam. We just need to pick his brain for the entire hour plus. So buckle up. So Sam, every year at the draft lottery, there's a fan base that feels like they missed the top tier of prospects by one spot. This year, will that be the same team that gets the number three pick? Or do you think that it's possible that another prospect joins the top tier with Cooper Flagg and Dylan Harper by the end of the season?
I don't think it's likely that another prospect will join that top two group, but I have had this question posed to me by a few people, like how many players would go number one overall in the 2024 draft from the 2025. Right. And I do think Casperis would go number one in 2024. Okay. Uh, Look, Ace Bailey, I'm sure we'll talk about him, like fascinating player. I think if you ask GMs right now, would they take Ace Bailey over whoever they had at number one, which was very widespread and different for every front office last year? I think that some would take Ace Bailey. So I think it'd be like three and a half right now would be my response. But I would say in terms of like real franchise changing players, talent. Cooper flag is absolutely that.
I think Dylan Harper could be that for sure. I really liked Dylan. He's like right on that precipice of like tier one, tier two grade for me. Uh, I love everything I've seen from Dylan Harper. Uh, all of the Intel with Dylan is extremely, extremely high level, much like it is for Cooper. Uh, Cooper's Intel is just like some of the best Intel like I've gotten about a prospect. Uh, and then Dylan's is also exceptionally high level. So I, There aren't a lot of red flags with either of those players, and I think that's what's so exciting about those two particularly.
So if this is a two-player draft at the top, let's just say, if you're looking at the bottom seven or eight teams in the NBA right now, which teams do you think most need to jump up into that top two? Who should be most desperate?
Yeah, so... The answer to me is Portland, number one. I just am not... Portland is not an untalented basketball team. They're sitting at seven right now in the draft order as we speak, right? It's not like they don't have guys, but... I'm fairly worried about the scoot Henderson experience at this point. I do think that like a coaching change is in order there. I would like to see scoot under a different coach, especially after he played really, really well without Chauncey Billups there for a few games earlier this season, I think about a month ago. So I would really like to see just like a different voice there, but you know, scoot himself, it's all flashes. It's not consistent play. And it feels like a lot of the time he doesn't,
regularly understand like the tempo of the game in the way that you need to at the point guard position. So, I mean, they, you know, kind of strike me as a team that could really use one Brooklyn, obviously, but like Brooklyn is also in a big market. And from what I understand about kind of their plans moving forward, I, they have so many draft picks now and they have so much flexibility and cap space moving forward that they're going to be able to turn this thing around on the fly pretty quickly. Right. And I don't think they're just looking at this draft is like, we have to get number one or number two. they're looking at things holistically and saying, we need to get another star in the building and we want to position ourselves in order to be able to find that star either via free agency trade market or the NBA draft.
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