Before the 2025NBA Draft, we’ll take an in-depth look at different prospects here at Liberty Ballers and try to figure out which players would be the best fit for theSixers at Nos. 3 and 35. Next up in this series is Duke’s Sion James.
It’s interesting how there are players at the top of this draft (think Rutgers prospects and Collin Murray-Boyles) whose college teams were afterthoughts. Then there are players at the end of the first round and into the second round whose college teams were playing into April this year. If we’re going to knock the lottery prospects for not being a part of winning cultures in college, then maybe we should at least slightly elevate the lower-ranked prospects that did contribute to a lot of winning collegiately.
In fairness, NBA prospects that are projected lottery picks from bad college teams can only do so much to make their college teams better. For as much as basketball teams at any level can be carried by stars, there are lots of other players on those teams touching the ball. On the flip side, if there’s so much talent on one college team, perhaps some of the ancillary players on that roster get bumped down draft boards too much, solely due to a lack of visibility.
That might be part of why Duke’s Sion James is projected to go in the middle of the second round next week. He’s nowhere near the size of Khaman Maluach and of course he didn’t have the role Kon Knueppel or Cooper Flagg had. This isn’t me suggesting that he’s as good as those players, but it is me suggesting that we may not have seen the best version of James at Duke and his strengths may not have been highlighted as much as other prospects’ strengths are.
Profile:
2024-25 Stats: 39 games, 25.5 minutes, 8.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.3 blocks, 51.6 FG%, 41.3 3P%, 81.0 FT%
Team: Duke
Year: Super Senior
Position: SG/SF
Height and Weight: 6’6’’ 220 lbs.
Born: December 4, 2002 (Rookie season in NBA will be his age-23 season)
Hometown: Sugar Hill, Georgia
Strengths
Let’s start with the fact that at his listed height and weight, he certainly seems like someone that can hold his own on the wing in the NBA. Perhaps he’s best suited at the shooting guard position, but I’d like to think the 220-pound frame could hold up at small forward in some smaller lineups. In addition to having a body type that appears ready for the NBA, James possesses strong lateral quickness that enabled him to defend the 1-3 spots in college. He’s physical, makes a lot of hustle plays and just seems like someone that could really be a pest off the bench and come in to guard a hot opposing scorer and cool that player off. It was this kind of defensive tenacity that allowed Tony Allen to thrive in the NBA as a wing defender and Allen was a couple inches shorter than James.
I think it’s safe to say that defense is probably going to be James’ calling card if he is to survive in the NBA, but we have to also acknowledge his improvements as a shooter in college. James played his first four years of college ball at Tulane and was not a good shooter when he arrived in New Orleans. The Georgia native shot just 28% from deep and 65% from the free-throw line as a freshman with the Green Wave and started 17 of the 23 games he appeared in so his struggles as a shooter were not due to lack of playing time. Fast forward to 2024-25, his only year at Duke, and James is shooting over 40% from the three-point line and over 80% from the free-throw line on a team that went to the Final Four. While his minutes rose considerably at Tulane and then predictably declined when he got to Duke, James was still improving enough as a shooter while at Tulane to be attractive to the Duke staff.
Lastly, James seems to keep his poise offensively when pressured. It helps when you have offensive talents like Flagg and Knueppel to pass to, but what James lacked in shot creation he made up for in playmaking. He’s not a point guard, but he’s a more than capable passer as a wing and if he can get drafted to a team that already has a few solid offensive threats, he should be able to find those players when he gets caught with the ball in a precarious position.
Weaknesses
As hinted at, James isn’t a shot creator. This is going to make it very difficult for a wing like him to score at even a league-average rate if his three-point shooting does not translate up. He seems to lack much of a pull-up game which allows defenses to go under a lot of ball screens on James and while he has good lateral speed defensively, it doesn’t appear to translate into blow-by speed offensively so he doesn’t look like someone that’s going to score a lot going to the basket.
For as improved of a shooter as James is, he’s not someone that you run a lot of off-ball screens for him to come off of either, as that has never been a part of his game. Simply put, you’re really not going to call offensive plays for James much at all. This doesn’t mean he’s a zero offensively, as he can score some in the NBA if he’s a willing shooter when the looks are there and if he attacks the rim enough to where he can take on contact and get to the line where his free-throwing shooting has gotten better. But sometimes you see prospects that go in the second round that are microwave scorers that just weren’t consistent enough to become first-rounders. James isn’t that. He just doesn’t seem to have a wide-enough array of offensive skills to even have the ability to heat up in short stints as a scorer.
Potential Fit with the Sixers
Given the glut of guards on Philadelphia’s roster, and the possibility of adding another one at third overall next week, I can understand why some may like if James was an inch or two taller. That would make him more of a natural small forward/undersized power forward as opposed to the natural shooting guard/undersized small forward that he projects as. However, without knowing who the selection is at No. 3 overall and just doing our best to work off of what we can be infer about the 2025-26 Sixers, James would probably fit in well off the bench as a rookie.
Most Sixers fans are expecting all three of Tyrese Maxey, Jared McCain and Quentin Grimes to be a part of next year’s rotation. However the minutes were to shake out amongst these three guards, James is bigger than all three so when James saw some playing off the bench, it could probably be in a lineup with two of those three guards on the floor. Additionally, Maxey and McCain aren’t really known for their defensive prowess so James could come in right away and Nick Nurse and company could just tell him to hound opposing wings and be the defensive pest he was in college knowing they’ll get the scoring from other sources. This often feels like the best way to develop second-rounders. You should want to highlight their strengths right away and allow them to feel like their best qualities are NBA traits, and focus on skill development throughout the rest of their rookie contracts once some confidence is established in the NBA.
If James ends up in Philadelphia, he would have to compete with some other wings his size for playing time, although that wouldn’t be a bad thing. His chief competition for minutes would likely be Justin Edwards and Ricky Council IV, who are both also in their early 20s. But a little competition amongst the younger players at the end of the rotation could be healthy. If two of Edwards, Council IV and James played in Philadelphia for the majority of their 20s in whatever the smaller capacity was, it’s undoubtedly a win for the front office, especially since Edwards and Council IV were undrafted.
Draft Projection
ESPN Mock Draft: No. 45 to Chicago Bulls
What’s interesting about where James is slotted in this mock draft is that he’s a part of a tier in the 40s that’s almost exclusively NCAA players that were seniors or super seniors this past season. Age often bumps players down draft boards, but I think that’s a bigger issue at the top of the draft. Certainly, lottery teams are going to prefer taking a teenager who will be 22 or 23 when his rookie contract expires. That’s always going to be more attractive than someone who’s 22 or 23 when drafted and will already be at or hovering around 30 by the end of his second contract, if he’s even good enough to sign two NBA contracts.
But I think these kinds of concerns are sometimes put under the microscope a bit too much. A player should not fall in the draft simply because of his age. The common thread with a lot of the college seniors that go in the second round is more so that they lack enough translatable skills to the NBA, not that they’re already 22 or 23 years old. If there are enough translatable skills however, the age concern should be pushed to the side.
In the case of James, the primary skill that teams are going to have to buy will be his defense. From there, how much of an improved shooter teams believe him to be will probably dictate how high he goes in the second round. By most of the projections, he should be available for Philadelphia at 35.