2025 NBA Mock Draft: Cooper Flagg is top pick; Dylan Harper, Ace Bailey round out top three selections

The 2025 NBA Draft class is interesting for three reasons:

• No. 1: It has a rare immovable lock at No. 1. Cooper Flagg is objectively one of the four best prospects of the past 15 years. Regardless of how his career goes, this draft will probably be remembered most for how great/good/average/disappointing his career becomes.
• No. 2: For the first time ever, a team will have two top-10 picks (and probably top-five) after failing to make the NCAA Tournament. Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey (formerly of Rutgers) have a healthy chance to go top-three, even.
• No. 3: The most under-discussed element of this draft is how relatively thin it is, top to bottom. This was a prevalent talking point with the 2024 draft, but due to Flagg, Harper, Bailey and even the high ceilings of Kon Knueppel, Tre Johnson and VJ Edgecombe, the depth of this draft (or lack thereof) has been sort of glossed over. But in tracking these college players across five months, checking in with NBA sources and referencing back to many of the drafts in the past decade, it's easy to make the case that this year is destined to see a lot of misses in the lottery. Plus, we'll inevitably get unexpected pops after the late first round when we circle back four, five years from now.

While draft-night trades are inevitable, I can't shake the sense this won't be a hyperactive transactional draft to move up and get players, because the evenness from pick No. 8 to 12, from No. 15 to 23, from No. 28 to 44, feels as flat as any draft in recent memory.

Here's a tour of the first round. In years past, I've done big-board mock drafts wherein I ranked the prospects regardless of team need and slotted them accordingly. But for this year, I'm going the more traditional route and trying to project the general layout these players will be selected, taking team needs into account as well as where their stock seems a little more than a week out from draft night.