NBA Draft 2025: Hand-tracking the best passer in the draft – Basketball insider
Traditional measures of traditional struggle to fully capture the player’s playing level. All assists and turnovers are not created equally, but they are called such in basic statistics. My goal is to create manual tracking, subjective measures of quality through quality to better estimate the player’s passing quality.
Inspired by the “big time throwing” measure of professional football’s focus, I tracked the frequency of players throwing, showing advanced vision, accuracy, processing and creativity. This is not an exact science, but imagine the best “big time passer” (potential assists every 40 minutes) that can help us better approximate the best passers in the 2025 NBA Draft.
One of my main goals for my 2025 Draft Pass chart is to use my hands to track the big time pass rate, especially
As always, closest to the top right is where you want, high pass + quality pic.twitter.com/jn2kntht4b
– Ben Pfeifer (@BJPF_) June 13, 2025
I will dig deeper into the details of my charting process in future articles. What can we learn from the chart above at present? The outlook in the upper right corner of the chart generates more potential assists and records higher average pass quality. Larger bubbles indicate more passes thrown under pressure, defined as two or more crowded defenders (or one and one boundary line).
From this information, what can we collect from certain passers-by in Class 2025?
Egor Demin, Kasparas Jakucionis and Jeremiah are worried
Potential assists every 40 minutes, Demin (14.9), Jakucionis (13.4) and Fear (12.4) are the highest passers in the class in my class by far in the 24 prospects I have drawn. None of these three scores are large passers, and all three scores are outside the top ten.
While this may be surprising based on their reputation as a passer, their high pass load deflates their overall pass quality metrics. All three leading guards threw a large number of basic passes with high usage rates and offensive burdens, resulting in potential assists. Even the best passers-by in the world did not show any special passing characteristics.
Damin, Yakucinis and Fear all throw more big passes than many of the players above, but they generally go over frequently. All three players (particularly Demin and Jakucionis) are amazing passers, and their usage and offensive responsibilities essentially lead to more pass opportunities than those who don’t play often.
Kon Knueppel
My Large Passing Level Kon Knueppel is the highest quality passer in this class (31.4%). This may surprise some people, but after a closer inspection it’s easy to see how strong Knueppel’s death is indeed. Especially in games without Cooper Flagg, Knueppel takes on the main entertainment role.
It’s no accident that Kon Knueppel’s huge time past rate (31.4%) is the highest of any prospect I’ve tracked so far. He is a special processor
On these Lobs’ passes and layman he shows ridiculous vision and position on these passes pic.twitter.com/o00dqkdiqz
– Ben Pfeifer (@BJPF_) June 13, 2025
The chemistry of Knueppel with Khaman Maluach led to a large number of relaxed leaflets and recliners. He is an excellent processor that can read the floor smoothly as he heads towards the cup. Knueppel rarely makes bad decisions on the ball and always seems to find the best option on the floor. His overall pass is not great, but Knueppel makes the most of the pass opportunities he has created.
Due to his athletic limitations, many people consider Knueppel to be a low-level player. However, the quality of Knapel level greatly improves his potential ceiling. Players who are combined with passes and shooting can blow through what they call the ceiling and knueppel in the NBA.
Queen Derek
No better prospects reflect the need for better passing metrics than Derik Queen. Traditional pass metrics (such as assist to transition ratio (0.8) and support ratio (11.6%), he doesn’t rate as a playmaker. He ranks second in my big pass metric (31%), trailing Knueppel less than half a percent.
Queen scored wired, which reduced his overall pass volume. In the prospect I drew, the Queen was only ranked 18th in potential assists every 40 minutes, but his average passing quality was very high. Watching the Queen’s passes give him a special machining speed, the creativity of the court mapping and passing is clearly clear.
Derik Queen has been throwing high levels, high difficulty passing, flickering NBA level processing speed, vision and skills
Nearly 27% of the time passed (according to my hands), I am a loyal believer in the ceiling he passed pic.twitter.com/hybcggtao2
– Ben Pfeifer (@BJPF_) January 24, 2025
An optimistic case of Queen Projection relies on his high-end pass flash, relying on him to improve his discipline, reduce stupid mistakes, and have more value than Maryland’s team with better supplemental players.
