Brooklyn Nets Draft Primer #1: Dylan Harper reaching for Cooper Flagg, Ace Bailey plummeting

With the Brooklyn Nets turning their attention toward the future, it’s only right we join them. Here is Lucas Kaplan’s first batch of prospect analysis for the 2025 class.

Wherever the Brooklyn Nets end up in the 2025 NBA Draft Lottery, their mission will be clear: Pick the best player available. That’s the mission for most teams every year, but there are rare exceptions in which a team may want to draft the player that fits the most snugly into their current roster. However, these Brooklyn Nets do not qualify, and they won’t in June either.

Even on the slight chance that General Manager Sean Marks makes all four first-round picks Brooklyn owns — rather than consolidating a couple to move up or, what I think is more likely, kicking the can down the road — he has to draft the four best players available. There is no current Brooklyn Net that necessitates certain teammates. If there was, the team wouldn’t be 11-18.

That 11-18 record, by the way, is firmly in the danger zone. That’s a 32-win pace, the exact pace Brooklyn won at last season, which good for the ninth-best lottery odds. Wherever you stand on the ethics of tanking (please do not comment below, unless you’re advocating to abolish the NBA Draft so we can be done with this whole mess), that record would be a tough pill for Brooklyn’s front office to swallow. They’ve said as much with the Dennis Schröder trade, and will likely say it again with trades in the coming weeks.

Courtesy of tankathon.com, here is a table of the lottery odds based on “seed” (a higher seed = a worse record)…

As you’ll notice, there are some oddities, like the 5th-worst team in the league having a 2.2% chance of getting the fifth pick in the draft. In any case, no matter where Brooklyn finishes in the 2024-25 standings, they will be reduced to a puddle of sweat and crossed fingers when the ping pong balls get to bouncing. Let’s hope for the best!

Cooper Flagg

The best, right now, is Cooper Flagg. That’s still true despite a statistical profile a little underwhelming for a prospect with as much hype as he. 16.3/8.6/3.5/2.8(stl+blk) on 42/25/75 shooting for the 6’9” wing who, and I cannot stress this enough, turned 18 years old on Saturday.

He will be 351 days younger than Victor Wembanyama at the time of their respective NBA debuts, and he is shooting 66% at the rim against a mostly non-conference schedule that’s included games against Auburn, Kentucky, Arizona, and Kansas. All of those teams are led by upperclassmen in the front-court who will have long careers playing professional basketball, and Flagg was the best defender in all those games.

He makes backline rotations at the rim, he plays the passing lanes, and almost nobody on the schedule has dared to try him 1-on-1. It was easy to project all of these valuable traits for Flagg as a Duke Blue Devil, just as it’s easy to project them for Flagg as an NBA player. It’s why he’ll very likely be going #1.

However, it’s fair to say Flagg has underwhelmed at times, beyond the box score. The shooting isn’t a worry, given his pre-college track record and the role he’s playing as Duke’s primary creator, a role he’s playing out of necessity. In seven games against Top 100 competition, his usage rate is a whopping 33%, which tops that of Luka Dončić, Ja Morant, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for comparison.

Becoming an offensive engine is not Flagg’s main selling point as a prospect, but an eventual hope for his game that could take him from great NBA player to inner-circle Hall-of-Famer. However, these constant creation reps are great for his growth, and are great to analyze.

Flagg has an envious combination of strength and touch from the short mid-range, and a plus-wingspan allows him to get all these shots off. (The best comparison for how his game look remains Breanna Stewart, for those familiar with the New York Liberty star.)

While we’ve seen flashes of great passing in the open floor, Flagg has missed a few valuable reads in the half-court, and that’s a big part of his appeal. Since he burst onto the scene as a dominant high-school prospect, Flagg has been touted as a plus-passer who won’t just hit the open man, but use his gravity to create extra high-value shots for his teammates. Moving around back-line defenders and whatnot. So far, that’s been lacking a tad.

And again, while the raw percentages are nothing to be concerned with yet, some of the shot selection is. Flagg is still so young, but he needs to improve his ability to capitalize on driving angles so fewer of his attacks end in that 12-foot area he’s so fond of. Through a dozen games, 34% of his shots are coming from the mid-range, just a smidge too high.

Bottom line: Cooper Flagg is overburdened for the Duke Blue Devils, as the rangy forward is carrying their offense. That’s exposing some flaws in his game, and likely leading to some subpar shooting numbers, but these are closer to nitpicks than true concerns. Whether Flagg is going to be a full-on primary creator in the NBA has always been a question and it still is. Whether he’s going to be a special competitor, a destructive force on defense, a scary cutter and finisher, and a coast-to-coast nightmare has never been a question. It still isn’t.

Video: Here is a more in-depth video of my thoughts on Cooper Flagg’s tape so far, diving deeper into what I wrote above…

Dylan Harper

For all of Flagg’s greatness as a prospect, it may be time to start having a conversation about who should be the first pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. That’s how well Dylan Harper — the 6’6” son of Ron Harper — is playing for Rutgers to start the season.

Harper is an automatic paint touch, not an overly explosive athlete but a special ball-handler and finisher who is damn-near ambidextrous on the court. Think Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, not Ja Morant.

Naturally, one main question is the jumper. Will NBA defenses be content to go under screens, will Harper be a detriment to the spacing of whatever offense he plays on? Early returns should tell us to buy this jumper; Harper is shooting 35% on five attempts a game, about half of which are assisted. These are some difficult shots as well, and most importantly, we can tell Harper has full trust in the damn thing, as evidenced by his game-winning bomb against Seton Hall…

That doesn’t look like a guy that can’t shoot. I don’t think it will be.

Like Flagg, Harper has over a 30% usage rate for Rutgers, who has far less talent than Duke, but primary ball-handler is a role he’s more suited to play, and it’s showing in the numbers: 23/5/4 with two turnovers a game, shooting 52/35/75. He has an on-court offensive rating of 121.2. These are superstar numbers from a guy who just might be a superstar prospect hiding in plain sight.

There is also the eye-test, which reveals a bunch of sick highlights of Harper crossing people over and scoring two points. Though he is not soaring through the air like the aforementioned Morant, he is big and crafty enough to evade defenders if his initial route to the rim is stopped. As a result, the guy is shooting an obscene 77.7% at the rim this year, getting there nearly eight times a game. It’s gross!

While there are some highlight passes every few possessions, playmaking is not a skill that’s popped for Harper yet. He can make basic reads in the pick-and-roll, throwing lobs or pocket passes with each hand, but feeling the other nine players on the court — specifically on the weak-side — will take time to develop.

Bottom line: Dylan Harper isn’t the youngest one-and-done (will turn 20 during his rookie year), but he may be morphing into a superstar prospect that could move into Flagg’s tier if this keeps up. He is one of the best ball-handling prospects in some time, and uses that skill to get to the rim over and over and over, where he may not always finish with punch, but finish accurately. Now the shooting is here? An NBA team will bet on the guy who can create advantages at-will to figure out everything else, no lower than #2 in the 2025 draft.

Video:

Ace Bailey

Harper’s teammate at Rutgers, freshman phenom Ace Bailey, has not had the same start to his collegiate carer. The numbers are decent for the wing who turns 19 in August, listed at 6’10” but surely a couple inches shorter than that: 18/8/1 on 51/33/63, but there haven’t been many more positives than that.

I don’t mean to be harsh on this teenager, and one selling point could be that he hasn’t played a ton of organized basketball prior to the NCAA, relative to his peers. But man, Bailey is just not a positively impactful player through ten games. Unfathomably, he has nearly four times more turnovers than assists despite a usage rate just under 27%.

He has a box-score plus-minus (BPM) of 0.1 right now. Forget Flagg and Harper, that’s worse than the vast majority of his teammates. For a general comparison, click this link to see every drafted player in the last 15 years with one NCAA season where he posted a usage rate above 25% and a BPM below 2 (which Bailey is not near yet). If you don’t feel like clicking the link, pause and consider Marcus Thornton as a high-end outcome for Bailey.

Look, he’ll probably be a valuable NBA player. Again, he’s played little organized ball before these, and he’ll be 19 for his whole rookie season. Bailey tries hard on defense and on the glass, and despite spacing out some of the time, he can really get into his opponents’ jersey on the perimeter.

Bailey is also a fantastic pure shot-making prospect that can make just about anything he throws up. He’ll have to make quicker decisions off the catch at the next level and take far more threes, but there is an easy pathway to productivity.

Bottom line: I actually think Ace Bailey is quite a projectable NBA player with a fairly stable floor and a very limited ceiling, which is the opposite of his reputation coming into Rutgers. There are obvious skills, and he seems like a hard-worker and good kid who wants to play the right, but his ball-handling and decision-making limitations reduce the chance of him becoming a true creator at the next level to almost zero. He should be good attacking some closeouts. But unless there’s a big change over the next few months, there is zero argument, in my opinion, to take him with a top-5 pick.

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Other Prospects

Kasparas Jakučionis may be the current favorite to wind up the consensus #3 prospect by June, if there is one. He is an 18-year-old Lithuanian with professional experience for FC Barcelona, but is now playing some great hoops for Illinois.

He’s a 6’4” guard who loves to play in the pick-and-roll, can pass with either hand, and is shooting 42.1% from three on a heavy diet of pull-ups. In his most recent game vs. Missouri, he buried a high-major defense with eye-popping shot-making…

Think Tyrese Hailburton. Jakučionis has not displayed the same level of passing creativity, but this is a guard who can seemingly run ball-screen action after ball-screen action, make the correct if basic read time and again, and a guy who may struggle to separate 1-on-1.

I don’t think I buy Jakučionis as a big-time creator at the NBA level, given the subpar athleticism to carry that type of burden and an apparent lack of true separation skills. Furthermore, the catch-and-shoot 3-point numbers have historically been lacking a bit for him.

But I don’t want to miss the forest for the trees with Jakučionis. He gets to the line with plenty of tricks in his bag, and most importantly, is an 18-year-old who has produced immensely everywhere he’s gone. At some point, that takes precedence.

If the Nets end up picking in the 5-10 range — their likeliest outcome right now — I would draft Jakučionis without thinking, if the possibility presents itself. Brooklyn can give him all the ball-handling reps he needs early on to figure out how to get his game off against better athletes, and he will get any screen-setter the Nets have plenty of touches.

Kon Kneuppel has an easy comparison, especially for Brooklyn fans: Joe Harris. Kneuppel has work to do to become that level of shooter — one of the most accurate in NBA history — but the Duke Blue Devil is about Harris’s size and can really shoot the rock.

He’s an older freshman who will turn 20 before his rookie season, should he declare for the 2025 NBA draft, and his creation game is far more polished than Joe Harris’ was at the same stage…

Kneuppel may fall in the dead zone for the Nets, too low to pick with their own choice, too high to pick with those other three first-rounders they have. But if Knueppel is there, and Sean Marks has a hankering for another shooter who is a safe bet to have a solid NBA career, Kneuppel is an option.

Khaman Maluach is another Duke Blue Devil that is sure to go in the first-round in Duke, but is much different than his teammates. The South Sudanese Olympian will turn 19 just before his rookie season kicks off, and unless he shrinks before then, he’ll be 7’2”.

Duke does not have the necessary players to feature Maluach a ton in the pick-and-roll, but rest assured Maluach has the mobility and hands to be a fantastic lob threat at the next level…

His overall sell as a draft prospect is straight-forward, with a rare combination of coordination and balance for an absolute giant, Maluach can become a two-way force at the basket. He’s even shooting 80% on free throws.

The word ‘project’ comes to mind, and with good cause. Maluach’s positioning and awareness on both ends will require a whole lot of work; should he become a Brooklyn Net, 30 minutes a night down on Long Island will likely be in the cards. But if he’s ever consistently in the right spots on defense and puts a little more muscle in his core and legs, say hello to two or three blocks a night.

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For the next batch of prospects, I’ll be looking at guys like VJ Edgecombe, Derik Queen, Jeremiah Fears, Labaron Philon, and others who are playing their way into the high-end of the lottery. (Comment below if you have a specific prospect you’d like to see analysis of.)

Obviously, even if the Brooklyn Nets do end up bottoming out in the 2025 NBA season, nothing is guaranteed, as our own ProfessorB broke down last summer. It’s nice to dream though, isn’t it?

As for the dream of getting the #1 pick and the rights to draft Cooper Flagg (or Dylan Harper), an unlikely scenario no matter where a team ends up in the lottery, the Nets will have to wait until May to find out where they’ll be picking this summer. Whole lot of hoops left until then, and likely, many losses.