Apricot's 2025 NBA Draft Tournament Group E: John Tonje, Koby Brea, Max Shulga, Chaz Lanier, Eric Dixon

well, GSW does need shooting

The index piece for Apricot’s 2025 NBA Draft Tournament is here. It describes the selection process, our stellar history of voting, why BPM is important, how Apricot’s Clunky Comps works, and all other gory details.

Intro: The Draft Tournament is to help you enjoy the draft

The tournament is designed for people who are not draft experts to catch up at a casual pace on prospects in the Warriors range. For this reason, I have sliced it up into a series of smaller votes instead of a massive 16+ player scouting report. These will be spaced out over the next few weeks until the NBA Draft.

The ultimate goal is for you to develop opinions and attachments about the different prospects, so you can

• argue with others,

• dream about the future,

• enjoy the draft with more suspense and emotional investment,

• be angry that your favorite wasn’t selected,

• and then in the future tell everyone how you had it right and the drafters were a bunch of idiots.

Despite our stellar track record, it’s unlikely we’ll guess exactly whom the Warriors will draft.

So it’s time for more! The Warriors have MIA’s second round pick at #41. Normally, you might say, why bother even thinking about this pick, because, in that range, the chances that the draftee will make an NBA roster is quite small.

However, the Warriors have really set the bar high, with

• 2024 #52 pick Quinten Post (feisty stretch 5 and stroopwafel enthusiast),

• 2023 #57 draft pick Trayce Jackson-Davis (solid big man and occasional starter) and

• 2022 #55 pick Gui Santos (energy guy and very occasional spot starter).

And yes yes everyone always wants to trade the pick for someone ready to contribute. Please don’t be obvious and boring and suggest that.

That’s like going to Disneyland and explaining that everyone there is exploited labor and that feline leukemia is the #1 killer of cats.

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Group E

Apricot: Today we look at a cluster of sweet shooting prospects who are falling into the second round: Chaz Lanier, Koby Brea, Max Shulga, and Eric Dixon. They are all shooting 37%+ 3P and also above 80% FT over their college career.

But they all have meh to bad defensive BPM stats. Here are their percentiles out of the Top 1000 players.

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John Tonje, Wisconsin, 6-5, #17 BPM

• BR 2025-05-28 #51, ESPN Givony 5-30 #42, TheAthletic 2025-06-10 #35, Yahoo O'Connor 5-30 #45

• The Ringer Mann 6-10: Tonje’s journey toward NBA prospect status has been … circuitous. Even though he was barely recruited as a high schooler, he eked out a place on Colorado State’s roster in the fall of 2019, clawed his way to a productive final season there, transferred to Missouri but had his fifth year disrupted by a foot injury, and then finally starred as an All-American at Wisconsin. His ability to shoot off the bounce and off the catch has propelled him through the maze, and it’ll most likely be the thing that dictates how much further he goes. His shot will most definitely need to speed up, but this past season he splashed in 42.1 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s and nearly 35 percent of his off-the-dribble 3s, both on sizable samples. Tonje’s handle will also need to shape up if he wants to continue in the heavy on-ball role he enjoyed at Wisconsin. Ultimately, he projects as the kind of classic second-side scorer who often gets picked late in the second round. His wide frame and hard-braking style in the paint might compensate for his ball security issues the same way they did in college, where he generated an obscene amount of free throw attempts this past season.

• Yahoo O'Connor 6-13: Tonje will enter the NBA at age 24 with some readymade skills as an off-ball movement scorer and shooter. But his athletic ceiling and defense will determine if he’s more than just a backup. It wouldn’t be so bad if that’s all he tops out as for the Bulls, who have Coby White currently leading the backcourt.

Apricot: John Tonje is my sleeper pick. His DBPM is on the high side of meh. His highlights show three-level scoring, he was an important player on a team that made an NCAA run and almost dragged Wisconsin into the Sweet 16 with a 37 - 4 - 4 monster game with 0 TOV before narrowly falling to BYU.

And Clunky Comps, oh boy. I am not entirely sure why Clunky loves Tonje but she LOVES him. Buddy Hield, Jamal Murray, Damian Lillard in their draft years?? If you’ve been following Clunky Comps… she hates everybody. You’ll plug in the most exciting prospect and she’ll bring you down to earth. Elsewhere in the article, I also include the Clunky Comps for the other snipers, who are to the naked eye not too far away from Tonje’s profile. Nope. Clunky spat out the most unencouraging and dire comps for every single other sniper.

So even though I question the meaningfulness of Clunky Comps, this is a really striking output that also happens to be in line with what my eye test says.

To try to figure out why Clunky Comps loves Tonje and not the others, I did some more statistical analysis.

Green means the prospect’s stat is higher than Tonje. The units are standard deviations with population the Top 1000 players.

So for instance, Dixon is way worse at defense and efficient shooting and getting to the free throw line, but had higher usage rate. Lanier was worse at offensive efficiency and offensive effect, better at steals. Shulga was better at defense, OREBs and playmaking AST and A/TO. But he was way less efficient on offense on lower usage. Finally, Brea is worse at offense on much much lower Usage, worse at defense, and worse at getting to the line. His Effective FG% was quite higher (Brea does have stupendous 3P% this year); AST/TOV was a lot better, but he had not too many AST…

So after all that, Clunky has convinced me that Tonje is the best of the batch.

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Max Shulga, VCU, 6-5, #37 BPM

• ESPN Givony 5-30 #81, TheAthletic 2025-06-10 #47

NBA Scouting Live:

Pros:

Fairly solid shooter
Fairly solid scorer off the dribble
Solid playmaker
Fairly solid rebounder for his size
Adequate defender that can get steals

Cons:

Lacks an elite first step off the dribble
Can be too passive on offense
Struggles to guard quicker players
Only an average athlete
Limited experience against top notch competition

Summary:

Max Shulga is an agile, skilled combo guard that currently plays at VCU. He is a crafty playmaker that can play either backcourt position and can score in a variety of ways, but he will need to improve his defense. Currently, he is a second round prospect for the 2025 draft.

NBA.com:

Overview

2024-25 Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and two-time All-Atlantic 10 First Team pick (2023-24, 2024-25) at VCU.

Shot 39.2% from three-point range over five college seasons – two at VCU and three at Utah State.

Helped lead VCU to a 28-7 record and Atlantic 10 regular-season and tournament championships in 2024-25.

2022-23 Mountain West Honorable Mention selection in his third season at Utah State.

Averaged 18.3 points, 5.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists for his native Ukraine at the FIBA U20 EuroBasket in 2022

Apricot: Shulga has the best defensive stats of the bunch with a quite high Steal Rate. The Clunky Comps are a little terrifying, though once could do worse than Ty Jerome and Sam Merrill.

Chaz Lanier, Tennessee, 6-5, #81 BPM

• BR 2025-05-28 #35, ESPN Givony 5-30 #37, TheAthletic 2025-06-10 #44, Yahoo O'Connor 5-30 #41

• Yahoo O'Connor 6-13: The Warriors need more shooting, which explains everything about this pick. Lanier transferred to Tennessee after four years at North Florida and immediately thrived as a knockdown shooter with shot-making creativity. But without great size or playmaking at his age, he’s a second-round prospect.

• NBADraft.net: Chaz Lanier projects as a polished, NBA-ready shooter with the strength, maturity, and basketball IQ to step into a rotation role quickly. His combination of efficient scoring, toughness, and veteran presence will appeal to playoff-caliber teams looking for bench shooting and spacing. While he lacks the upside of younger lottery prospects, his floor is relatively high thanks to his proven shot-making and physical tools. Likely to be targeted in the late first to early second round, Lanier could carve out a career as a reliable role player and situational scorer in the NBA.

Apricot: Excellent shooter and can score off the dribble as well. Clunky Comps is outputting a not-encouraging group of comparisons though.

Eric Dixon, Villanova, 6-8, #93 BPM

• BR 2025-05-28 #53, ESPN Givony 5-30 #45, TheAthletic 2025-06-10 #67, Yahoo O'Connor 5-30 #52

Yahoo O'Connor 6-13: Dixon is a burly forward who brings a toughness and physicality to the game. As Villanova’s all-time leading scorer, he showed versatile scoring skills, but in the NBA his lack of athleticism will put a limit on the type of usage he can receive. The pros outweigh the cons for a team in need of a tone-setter like the Suns though.

NBADraft.net. Outlook: Dixon is a strong, skilled scorer who was among the most efficient and productive offensive players in college basketball in 2024–25 … His combination of inside scoring and legitimate floor spacing gives him a clear path to a role in the NBA as a stretch four … While his age and athletic limitations cap his ceiling, he has the tools and toughness to contribute early in a simplified role … Will need to prove he can survive defensively against quicker forwards and continue hitting shots consistently to stick … Not a flashy prospect, but his basketball IQ, frame, and offensive versatility give him a shot to carve out a rotation role on a team that values physicality and shooting in its frontcourt …

Apricot: I was upset to find Cam Thomas was not in the Clunky Comps, given all I’ve heard about Eric Dixon as a bucket-getter with limited energy for defense. In fact it made me question the correctness of Clunky Comps code. However, it turns out Cam Thomas 2021 is at 0.77 similarity, just off the edge of this list. So I won’t delete Clunky Comps yet. And wouldn’t you say that GSW could have used Cam Thomas at times?

Koby Brea, Kentucky, 6-7, #175 BPM

• BR 2025-05-28 #42, ESPN Givony 5-30 #48, TheAthletic 2025-06-10 #49, Yahoo O'Connor 5-30 #38

• The Ringer Mann 6-10: There are obvious concerns about Brea’s game. He’s already 22 years old. He’s not the fastest, he’s not vertically or laterally explosive, and seldom will he beat anyone off the dribble or defend an opponent doing the same. But pound for pound, he’s the best 3-point shooter in this draft, and he can get his shot in a number of ways. This past season, Brea shot over 44 percent in handoffs, over 46 percent coming off screens, and an incredible 42.4 percent off the dribble. The important detail here is that he did all that while also standing at 6-foot-7. So hand-wringing over what he can’t do at the moment may be missing the point. When you’re that level of a threat, teams will find ways to get you on the floor.

• Yahoo O'Connor 6-13: This is Detroit’s lone pick in this draft. How will they build on what was such a promising step forward this season? The Pistons need more shooters and Brea projects as a shooting specialist who has a clear path to becoming a rotation player because of his highly sought after skill. But in order to avoid being a weak link on defense, he’ll need to make improvements to his athleticism.

Apricot: That shooting percentage is stupendous. He shot 43.5% 3P this year which is already stunning. But what if I told you that was a big drop-off from his 2023-24 year shooting 49.8% 3P on 201 3PA?

It has me desperately talking myself into him. That’s an absolutely elite percentage on a big sample set. Notably, the FT% is strong but the sample is minuscule. How do you play years of college and only get 96 FTA in 149 games and 5 years? And before you make some Steph Curry Ref Invisibility joke, Steph in his 2009 draft year in college alone shot 88% on 241 FTA.

Clunky Comps are discouraging. She is not helping me talk myself into the Koby Brea Experience. Warning: don’t get too excited about the Duncan Robinson and Corey Kispert comps, because they left school in 2018 and 2021, so these are early versions of both. Clunky doesn’t have feelings, otherwise she might have known how much the Justinian Jessup comp would hurt me.

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How To Vote

Simply vote in this embedded poll. If you are moved, you can make a COMMENT VOTE that counts as 10 votes. However, I will not count any vote unless it has

• some justification of your vote

• exactly one hashtag with the last name of your candidate, #TONJE, #BREA, #SHULGA, #LANIER, #DIXON

  • I know many of you are very creative and I usually encourage that, but any deviations from these instructions will make my life harder and annoy me.

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