While the playoffs are ongoing, for nearly half the league, it’s already the offseason as they prepare for the 2025 NBA Draft. The league announced Monday that they have the finalized the NBA Draft order, other than the lottery, after tiebreaker procedures.
There were five ties that needed to be broken up as teams finished the regular season with the same record. Next up is the draft lottery, set for May 12. The NBA Draft is set for June 25-26 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The Jazz, Wizards and Hornets have the best odds to land projected No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg as each team has a 14% chance to pick atop the draft.
For the Celtics’ purposes, the tiebreaker procedure didn’t have much of an impact. They’re set with their own first-round pick at 28th overall. They will also pick 32nd overall in the second round courtesy of the Wizards. So that’s a pair of selections for Boston president Brad Stevens and his front office close together.
Stevens made his first-ever first-round pick last season, when he took Baylor Scheierman at 30th overall. In past seasons, he elected to deal those first-round picks to help bolster the roster. Celtics fans have no complaints there as that helped him mold the current roster’s core that won the 2024 NBA title.
The draft will naturally be important for the Celtics going beyond this season. Their roster will only get more expensive, so finding cheap talent via the draft goes a long way. Scheierman’s emergence down the stretch of the season — even if he’s not a playoff contributor — could be important for the C’s in future years.
So the Celtics front office will be hard at work to find roster fits. They could use the draft to round out the roster, similar to what they did this past season. Scheierman spent the first parts of the year in the G League, but he played some rotation minutes late. That’s roughly the type of impact the Celtics could look for, though that also depends on what moves they make this summer after the 2025 playoffs.
