5 NBA Teams Already Regretting Their 2025 Draft Picks
It'll take a few years, a handful of fired general managers and maybe even some awkward "We like you, but we don't like like you" extension negotiations before we're sure about which teams blew it in the 2025 NBA draft.
But we've already seen enough to flag some potential mistakes.
Unfortunately for a couple of the teams involved, those gaffes were identifiable the second they took place. Squads like the New Orleans Pelicans won't be able to say their moves were defensible in the moment. Everybody who saw what happened on draft night was cringing in real time.
Let's see who else joins the Pels in an early-season scan of draft regrets.
Brooklyn Nets
1 of 5
Potential regrets for the Brooklyn Nets come in macro and micro forms.
The bigger-picture plan of keeping and using all five of their first-rounders—including three of them on point guards—was always going to be risky. On some level, the Nets deserve credit for taking a shotgun approach; theoretically, one of the playmakers they picked would show signs of being a true keeper. On another, there's clearly something to be said for allocation of resources.
Maybe Brooklyn would have been better served targeting another wing, or even trading some of its selections for future assets with more risk but greater potential upside.
Positional-glut issues aside, the Nets might feel better about their draft if they'd taken Ryan Kalkbrenner (No. 34) over Danny Wolf (No. 27). Kalkbrenner would easily make an All-Rookie team if the season ended today, and his combination of rim-protection and efficient finishing make it a lot easier to see him contributing as a starter over the long haul than Wolf.
Higher up the draft, maybe there would have been a way for the Nets to use all their picks to climb a spot or two, which might have netted Jeremiah Fears over Egor Demin or Cedric Coward over Nolan Traoré.
Washington Wizards
2 of 5
Tre Johnson has delivered as advertised, which is to say the No. 6 pick is giving the Washington Wizards exactly the kind of quick-trigger shooting and general bucket-getting knowhow his pre-draft billing suggested he would.
Objectively, he's been a successful pick, averaging 11.5 points and hitting 37.3 percent of his threes through the first month of the season.
At the same time, Bub Carrington, one of last year's first-rounders, is floundering at the point. The 14th pick in the 2024 draft is no longer starting after a brutally inefficient first few weeks that included an unthinkably low two-point field-goal percentage for a guard. Through his first 13 games, Carrington made just 23.9 percent of his shots inside the arc.
If he can't drastically improve his shooting efficiency and finishing, it'll be almost impossible for Carrington to stick as a rotation player, let alone regain a starting spot.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah Fears, picked one spot after Johnson, is flashing elite unteachable talent in New Orleans. Though he's loose with his passing and needs to improve his perimeter shot, Fears' exceptional handle and quickness allows him to get anywhere he wants on the floor. With even the slightest developments as a shooter and facilitator, he could become a star-caliber lead guard—exactly the thing Washington's rebuild lacks.
And given what we learned about how fixated New Orleans became with Fears and Derik Queen, just imagine the value Washington could have extracted in a trade by telegraphing an intention to take one of them at No. 6.
Phoenix Suns
3 of 5
In a sense, it's not the worst thing in the world that the Phoenix Suns are bringing No. 10 pick Khaman Maluach along at a snail's pace. The Duke product was one of the youngest and least experienced players in the draft and his development was always going to be a years-long endeavor.
That Maluach has more DNPs than appearances, and that he has topped five minutes in a game just twice this season, isn't necessarily a problem.
Then again, with trade acquisition Mark Williams (who's only 23) playing well as the starting 5, Maluach might be looking at an uphill battle for playing time even if he matures more quickly than expected.
The easy counter is that Williams' defining characteristic as a pro has been susceptibility to injury. Maluach might get reps by default if Williams' past health history is precedent.
It's just that if Phoenix had taken either Cedric Coward or Derik Queen, who came off the board within the next three picks, there wouldn't be any concern about the center spot, development timelines or allocation of resources. Each of those two prospects has flashed much more than Maluach, and each was also part of a draft-night trade.
It's also not unreasonable to argue that the Suns could have extracted value from the Grizzlies (which the Trail Blazers did by getting No. 16 and a 2028 first-rounder for Coward) or Pelicans (which the Hawks definitely did by landing an unprotected 2026 first-rounder and No. 23 for Queen).
If Maluach pans out, great. But it seems like the Suns left some money on the table by picking him.
New Orleans Pelicans
4 of 5
What's there left to say?
From the moment it happened, everyone knew the Pelicans had made a grave error, and the passage of time hasn't done anything to change that widely held opinion. Even if Derik Queen becomes an All-Star, it will have been a massive mistake (from a pure asset-management standpoint) to have surrendered No. 23 and an unprotected 2026 first-round pick to land him at No. 13.
Trading away next year's first-rounder without insisting on protections constituted a complete removal of the safety net that would have made this season's downward spiral bearable. Among the worst teams in the West and now distinguished as the first to fire their head coach, the Pelicans could have at least consoled themselves with a high lottery pick in a loaded draft next June.
Instead, they'll watch as the Hawks potentially make the playoffs and then add a cornerstone star somewhere inside the top four.
New Orleans is lucky the Luka Dončić trade is still in the back of everyone's minds. Otherwise, its draft-night debacle would be getting singled out as one of the worst trades in league history.
Utah Jazz
5 of 5
Ace Bailey was a high-ceiling, high-risk prospect, who, at the time of the draft, was being steered away from several teams. Even with all those potential trouble spots, he felt like the right move for a Utah Jazz team that needed a theoretical cornerstone after rebuilding for a few years without one.
He seemed like the shrewd pick at No. 5, risks and all.
Maybe we're galaxy-braining this a bit, but Kon Knueppel's immediately strong play might be forcing some reconsideration.
Bailey still has the big-wing frame, athleticism and shot-making upside, but Knueppel is a borderline star already. Through his first 14 games, the crafty wing averaged 17.6 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.7 assists on a 46.5/40.2/88.2 shooting split. Excellent feel, elite three-point shooting both off the catch and on the move, clever pick-and-roll orchestration—Knueppel has everything necessary to be an impact starter. And at 20 years old, it's not like the Duke product is topped out in terms of development.
Meanwhile, Bailey has played well in spurts and even threw together a pair of consecutive 20-point games last week. He's probably been as good as most expected given his youth (over a year younger than Knueppel) and relative inexperience.
The logic of selecting Bailey remains sound, but maybe the Jazz (who have spare first-rounders to throw into a deal) would have operated differently and traded up one spot if they'd known Knueppel was going to be this good right away—and have such high long-term potential.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
