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2025 NBA Mock Draft: C's prioritize defense with their two picks originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The NBA Draft typically ushers in the start of offseason movement, and we suspect the biggest drama at this year’s pick-a-palooza might ultimately be the maneuvering that teams engage in around the selections.

Will the Boston Celtics utilize their picks at Nos. 28 and 32? And who are the best players that might still be available when they go on the clock?

We’re admittedly no draft expert, so we cobbled together a crack team full of NBC Sports Boston’s top college hoops junkies and asked them to help steer us through our first mock draft. With their guidance, we charted a path to Boston’s pair of picks.

1. Dallas Mavericks: Cooper Flagg, Duke

2. San Antonio Spurs: Dylan Harper, Rutgers

No drama at the top. Fresh off the Luka Doncic debacle, Nico Harrison couldn’t possibly fumble the Flagg. The Spurs take Harper, either as another young prospect to nurture alongside Victor Wembanyama, or to deliver to whatever team sends them a more established star in a win-now pursuit.

3. Philadelphia 76ers: Ace Bailey, Rutgers

If the Sixers truly engaged the Spurs about shimmying up to No. 2, then it suggests they are not sold on the other guard that might be sitting there for them (VJ Edgecombe). Rebuffed, we suspect they zag and take Bailey.

4. Charlotte Hornets: VJ Edgecombe, Baylor

5. Utah Jazz: Kon Knueppel, Duke

Keep an eye on Utah. The last time an Ainge was at the helm of a draft where his team maddeningly slipped to the fifth pick, there were fireworks that ultimately led to two big-swing trades (and, eventually, Banner 17). Maybe Austin Ainge makes a move and shows he wasn’t kidding when he said the Jazz were focused now on winning games.

6. Washington Wizards: Tre Johnson, Texas

7. New Orleans Pelicans: Khaman Maluach, Duke

Pelicans add another defensive weapon, and maybe they finally decide to move on from the other Duke guy who can’t seemingly stay on the court.

8. Brooklyn Nets: Jeremiah Fears, Oklahoma

9. Toronto Raptors: Kasparas Jakucionis, Illinois

10. Houston Rockets: Carter Bryant, Arizona

11. Portland Trail Blazers: Derik Queen, Maryland

Another big man in Portland!? Guess that would make Robert Williams III expendable. Say to a team that might just have a hefty disabled player exception available after its offseason tinkering.

12. Chicago Bulls: Egor Demin, BYU

13. Atlanta Hawks: Noa Essengue, France

14. San Antonio Spurs: Nique Clifford, Colorado St.

Gregg Popovich knows all about plucking an unheralded talent out of the state of Colorado and molding them into NBA talent

15. Oklahoma City Thunder: Asa Newell, Georgia

It doesn’t seem fair that the Thunder have a pick just outside the lottery. And it will seem doubly unfair when they land an intriguing, high-upside player like Newell

16. Orlando Magic: Hugo Gonzalez, Spain

17. Minnesota Timberwolves: Collin Murray-Boyles, South Carolina

18. Washington Wizards: Cedric Coward, Washington State

19. Brooklyn Nets: Thomas Sorber, Georgetown

20. Miami Heat: Danny Wolf, Michigan

21. Utah Jazz: Jase Richardson, Michigan State

22. Atlanta Hawks: Nolan Traore, France

23. Indiana Pacers: Joan Beringer, France

24. Oklahoma City Thunder: Noah Penda, France

So, basically, whoever wins the NBA Finals is drafting a French guy.

25. Orlando Magic: Liam McNeeley, UConn

26. Brooklyn Nets: Walter Clayton Jr., Florida

27. Brooklyn Nets: Will Riley, Illinois

28. Boston Celtics: Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton

Our panel really wanted us to make Maxime Raynaud the pick here, but given the choice between two available big men, we’re taking the guy with an elite defensive skillset.

The 7-foot-1 Kalkbrenner packs pure size and might be the best rim protector in the draft. If you’re not certain that Luke Kornet will be back, Kalkbrenner can fill some of Luke’s void (even if no one can fill his entertainment value).

Kalkbrenner’s age (he’ll turn 24 as a rookie) isn’t ideal, but we think it gives him a Payton Pritchard-like chance to contribute from the start of his pro career. That he was teammates with Baylor Scheierman at Creighton is a fun storyline, too.

29. Phoenix Suns: Maxime Raynaud, Stanford

30. Los Angeles Clippers: Drake Powell, North Carolina

31. Minnesota Timberwolves: Ben Saraf, Israel

32. Boston Celtics: Adou Thiero, Arkansas

We’re slightly worried about some overlap with another Arkansas pick the Celtics made recently (Jordan Walsh), but the Celtics need wing depth, especially with Jayson Tatum sidelined, and Thiero has an NBA-ready frame (6-foot-6, 7-foot wingspan).

We like the all-gas, no-brakes scouting report. It feels like he can carve out a role as an energy guy while figuring out where his offensive contributions can come from at the NBA level. His 3-point percentage (25.6) during his lone season at Arkansas is troubling, but the athleticism is obvious with many eye-popping dunks in his highlight reel.

If Spain’s Hugo Gonzalez is still on the board here, he might also be an option as a raw teenager with a similarly intriguing motor.

Self-awareness may be Tyrese Haliburton’s greatest attribute. That was obvious at last summer’s Olympics as the 25-year-old All-Star was confined to the Team USA bench.

Instead of hitting out at online fans who kept tabs on Indiana Pacers star’s smiles, high fives and other displays of team spirit to make up for his lack of on-court statistics, Haliburton seized on the chance to dunk on himself. After the US pipped France in the final, Haliburton posted a selfie with his gold medal. “When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A,” he wrote.

This year, however, Haliburton has proved that he’s no joke. His late-game heroics are the main reason why the Indiana Pacers are just two wins from the NBA title. Time and again during these playoffs Haliburton has snatched the Pacers back from what had looked like certain defeat – and with every M Night Shyamalan twist he orchestrates on court, he shows that no moment is ever too big for him.

Where another player might struggle to add one clutch playoff bucket to his highlight reel, Haliburton has made a game-tying or game-winning shot in every round of this year’s postseason– a heady accomplishment only Reggie Miller, Haliburton’s Pacers archetype, can match. In the first round against Milwaukee, Haliburton beat Giannis Antetokounmpo for a layup to steal Game 5 in overtime and close the series. Late in Game 2 of the conference semi-finals versus Cleveland, Haliburton sank a three-pointer off his own missed free-throw to stun the home crowd and take a 2-0 series lead. In the opening game of the conference finals, Haliburton not only bounced in a buzzer-beater three to force overtime against New York. He celebrated by grabbing his neck and reprising Miller’s notorious choking gesture from the 1994 conference finals series, triggering Knicks fans all over again as Miller looked on approvingly. Then, in the Game 1 victory over the Thunder in the NBA finals, the Pacers achieved their only lead when Haliburton hit the game’s last shot with 0.3 seconds left to cap his team’s fifth comeback while trailing by 15 points or more these playoffs – the most since Miller’s Pacers stormed through the brackets in 1998.

Related: The unsinkable Pacers don’t need the lead. They just need the last word | Claire de Lune

Counting the regular season and the playoffs this year, Haliburton is a robust 86.7% on shots taken inside the final two minutes (including overtime) to tie or take the lead. The same fans who once joked about Haliburton’s smiles-per-game at the Olympics have shifted to likening his uncanny talent for upending win-probability trend lines to basketball terrorism. Nicknames for Haliburton on social media include The Haliban and, when he beat Thunder in Game 1 of the finals, Himothy McVeigh, a play on the Oklahoma City bomber (It should go without saying that such wordplay is in questionable taste.)

All of this has put the league, already under fire for its muted NBA finals spectacle, in the unfortunate position of having to astroturf another Haliburton nickname, The Moment, in hopes of stopping the more charged ones from spreading further. (Newsflash: it hasn’t caught on with fans.) That Haliburton has suddenly emerged as the man for the moment is a development few outside Indianapolis saw coming. At the Olympics, Haliburton struggled to break a Team USA point guard rotation that included all-time great shooter Steph Curry and Derrick White, the freshly minted NBA champion from the Boston Celtics.

Altogether, Haliburton sat out three of six games and played 26 total minutes in Paris – the fewest of anyone on the team. Speaking to ESPN’s Jamal Collier last month, he’d call his Olympic experience an “ego check” and said the online jokes hurt. (The smile, it turns out, was just a cover.) “It got to the point where all that conversation was weighing on me in a negative way for the first time in my life, which was weird,” Haliburton said. “Basketball has always made me happy. And for the first time I wasn’t happy.” Adding to the insults: Haliburton was nursing a hamstring injury suffered during a Cinderella run through the 2024 playoffs that was cut short when the top-seeded Celtics swept the sixth-seeded Pacers in the conference finals.

The hits didn’t stop there. As the playoffs began in April, The Athletic asked NBA players who they considered the league’s most overrated player. With 158 anonymous replies (or more than a quarter of the locker room population), Haliburton won handily – with 14.4% of the vote – over Minnesota big man Rudy Gobert and Atlanta pest Trae Young. But Haliburton, who further confessed to learning a lot from how USA teammates Jayson Tatum (who also went overlooked in the Olympic rotation) and Joel Embiid handled criticism on their respective NBA squads, didn’t let the disrespect get him down this time. “I must be doing something right,” Haliburton said in response to the poll. “My focus is on this locker room and securing victories. I know who I am. I’m confident in myself and not concerned with what others think.”

Haliburton has shown as much throughout the season, wearing a goofy smile as he rips hearts out from coast to coast. All the while he has navigated the ancillary controversies around his game – from the NBA banning his father, John, from attending games as punishment for taunting Antetokounmpo; to Haliburton himself nearly upstaging Pascal Siakam’s acceptance of the conference finals MVP award – with grace and maturity. “When we brought him here, we had a vision,” Haliburton said of Siakam, shrugging off his unwitting echo of a popular meme from a past NBA All-Star celebrity game. “We envisioned doing something like this, doing something special.” It just confirms what teammates already know about Haliburton: he’s not playing for the spotlight.

That was obvious again in the Pacers’ 116-107 victory over the Thunder on Wednesday night – a nip-tuck affair in which Haliburton made the difference with his defense and distribution of the ball, and Indiana’s bench carried the day. In one late-game sequence, he managed to outfox Gilgeous-Alexander – a solid off-ball defender – in a clever half court set piece from the left elbow. Instead of dishing the ball off to a cutting Miles Turner, who only had SGA to beat in the lane, Haliburton fired the ball past Turner to Aaron Nesmith on the opposite wing – who then buried a three over a wrongfooted Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to give the Pacers an eight-point lead with three minutes left. No, the play wasn’t as sexy or as seismic as a Haliburton desperation heave. But there’s no doubt it was clutch.

“I mean, I was like three months old last time they made the finals,” Haliburton joked to NBA TV while considering the significance of helping the Pacers to their first finals trip first finals trip in 25 years. “As a group, every year we’ve taken a jump. We’re here now, and we don’t want to take this time for granted.” Now two wins from delivering the Pacers’ first ever NBA championship (they had previously won three titles in the defunct ABA), Haliburton is on the brink of turning a series that began with low expectations into one that may forever live in NBA lore. It’s quite the turnabout for a player who seemingly couldn’t make the grade.

Sixers draft profile: Tre Johnson's shooting, scoring should appeal to plenty of teams  originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

A scouting report on NBA draft prospect Tre Johnson:

• Position: Shooting guard 
• Height: 6-foot-4.75 (without shoes)
• Weight: 190 pounds 
• College: Texas 

Strengths 

It would be perfectly fair to describe Johnson as “a bucket” and leave it at that.

In his one college season, the 19-year-old averaged 19.9 points, 3.1 rebounds and 2.7 assists. Shooting is easily the most attractive aspect of his game. Johnson fired up 6.8 three-pointers per contest and made 39.7 percent. He hit 87.1 percent of his foul shots. 

The variety of Johnson’s long-range jumpers was fantastic. He’s audacious and highly capable of draining shots when he curls around screens, side steps, pulls ups, steps back … there truly doesn’t appear to be anything absent from his jump shooting arsenal.

That extends to Johnson’s mid-range skill. He’s mainly a top prospect because of his outside shooting, but Johnson is tricky, crafty and comfortable with turnarounds, fadeaways and step-throughs in the mid-post. We’ll see what his role winds up being in the NBA, but multi-dimensional scoring never hurts and mid-range shotmaking is always handy in the playoffs.

Johnson has a 6-foot-10.25 wingspan, which enhances some of his tools. Added muscle would help the Dallas native’s inside-the-arc game (more on that below), but Johnson’s length is clearly a plus in terms of 1. His ability to get shots off and 2. His chances of being able to decently defend NBA wings. 

Weaknesses 

Johnson called his defense “up and down right now” in an interview with Yahoo Sports’ Kevin O’Connor.

While his wingspan is useful defensively, that’s Johnson’s worse end of the ball by a wide margin. Johnson plays somewhat upright and doesn’t move with the same fluidity and balance as on offense. As far as impactful anticipation and disruption, Johnson’s not offering much at the moment. Over 33 games, he totaled 41 “stocks” (31 steals, 10 blocks) and rarely was on the highlight radar. 

Johnson’s lack of strength hurts on defense. It also prevents him from being a three-level scorer, along with the fact that he does not possess elite burst. Johnson isn’t the sort of player who can effortlessly blow past defenders, power around corners, create clear advantages off the dribble and regularly reach the rim. He was a subpar finisher at Texas, too. Per The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie, Johnson made 46.5 percent of his shots at the rim and only dunked twice. 

Though Johnson’s basic passing numbers were fine — 2.7 assists and 1.8 turnovers per game — he was obviously a shot-first player at Texas and didn’t display tons of impressive passing talent. 

Fit 

Just about any NBA team would adore Johnson’s shooting. Even if he never becomes a massive scorer in the league, Johnson seems to have strong odds of knocking down jumpers and nicely complementing stars.  

If the Sixers took Johnson at No. 3, they’d likely hope he could gain strength and ultimately do adequate work on defense against wings. Sixers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey has indicated Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain and (restricted free agent) Quentin Grimes will be core pieces, so defensive questions would be logical if the Sixers picked another guard in Johnson.