Time for a 180.
In our first in-depth analysis of a potential #8 overall pick for the Brooklyn Nets in the 2025 NBA Draft, I looked closely at Jeremiah Fears. There is obvious upside to his game, and the highlight package he produced as a ball-dominant guard in his lone year at Oklahoma University will be enough to make Brooklyn think twice about passing on him, if he’s even there at #8. And yet, the flaws in Fears’ profile cannot be hand-waved away — it’s hard to fall head over heels for a rim-pressuring ball-handler who struggled in the paint.
Given how often he handled the ball for an SEC club, there should be something close to a consensus within the Nets’ robust scouting department on his strengths and weaknesses. Whether he will become a successful primary option in today’s NBA is the real question.
Noa Essengue, currently playing in the Bundesliga (top German league) semifinals for Ratiopharm Ulm, is an entirely different type of prospect. The one similarity he shares with Fears is youth: He won’t turn 19 until mid-December.
Whoever drafts Essengue is not drafting him to be a primary option, but to swing on a wild mix of frame and feel. Even then, there’s mystery: At the Basketball Without Borders Combine in February 2024, Essengue measured in at 6’9” with a 6’11” wingspan, but a seemingly impossible 9’3” standing reach.
For reference, Nic Claxton is 6’11” with a 7’2.5” wingspan, and his standing reach is 9’2”. Essengue looks like he may have grown since then, but in any case, it suggests very, very narrow shoulders, a possible impediment to adding muscle.
See how deep in the weeds we are already? Let’s zoom out a bit.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, Essengue feels like a safer bet to become a valuable rotation player in the NBA than Fears. If the 6’3” guard isn’t excelling as a lead ball-handler, and that’s a high bar to clear, there’s not many other pathways to success.
On the contrary, you just don’t see many prospects with Essengue’s feel for the game, all-encompassing if fairly weak frame, and youth. You see even fewer of them fail. Essengue should should figure out a way to contribute, like he does in these clips for Ulm, some of which occur before his 18th birthday...
It takes only a few possession of Essengue tape to see that he has a natural understanding of space and the pressure points of a defense; he sweatlessly projects as a valuable cutter in the NBA. He also covers the court yards at a time with his long strides, and even when the lanky teenager gets a bit awkward, which he does on that final alley-oop, his massive catch radius saves him.
I would categorize all of the following plays — a mix of defensive rotations, extra passes, and strong anticipation — as evidence of high-feel, particularly for a low-usage teenager in a professional league. Don’t fight the smile too hard when you see this first pass...
Bundesliga was a fun setting for Essengue, a rigorous professional league full of grown men and deep coaching staffs without the necessary talent level to play him off the court when he was struggling.
The main physical concern with Essengue’s tape is that there weren’t many truly explosive or forceful moments. Despite drawing a lot of fouls by virtue of finding cracks in the defense, he could rarely power through or over opponents en route to the rim. The future French Olympian also had a thin margin of error in regards to his positioning on defense.
He rarely stunned in rim protection, soaring across the paint in help or recovering from behind a driver. Essengue has Mrs. Incredible arms and can pivot on a dime, so is it too harsh to be surprised that these plays in the paint didn’t go his way?
A blizzard of clichés will blanket whichever team selects Essengue, and it’s easy to term him a “raw” “project” that won’t contribute for a while. There are clips of him struggling to keep quick-footed guards in front of him on switches, but he also locked up quite a few this season. For all the blocks and steals that he may have been able to get with a little bit more muscle or explosion, he still racked up those counting stats...
Some recent Noa Essengue stocks. Best combination of ground coverage and length (9'3.25'' standing reach) in class. 2.8% block and 1.9% steal rate while just recently 18, playing in the Eurocup and German league. pic.twitter.com/6okd7lVY5s
— Matt Powers (@DraftPow) January 28, 2025
The offensive numbers are less impressive. In regular season, Eurocup, and postseason play this year, he’s shooting around 26% from three and 70% from the free-throw line. Anecdotally, he’s hit some massive jumpers at the end of close games, and the form looks smoother in June than it did in October, but he’s not going to enter the NBA sniping away...
So, what’s it going to look like in the half-court? Is being an ambitious cutter and offensive rebounder by snaking along the baseline, while getting into the short-roll and playing the dribble-handoff game going to be enough? There’s little doubt Essengue will have the tact to play such a role, but will the touch and strength come along, particularly for playoff basketball?
This is the big question, and also why it’s so hard to hard to discuss Essengue without getting into the weeds of biomechanics. He’s obscenely coordinated for an 18-year-old that looks to be 6’10”, but unless he can dish out some physical punishment on his drives, it’s tough to imagine he’ll have the handle and burst to do a ton of downhill damage...
big Essengue question for me is how much he'll be able to bulk and/or improve the handle to feel comfortable in traffic.
So many of his drives turn into, basically, post ups where he can't attack head-on. Misses a chance to pass the ball cross-court that he'd otherwise see: pic.twitter.com/1wbXNT9brl
— Lucas Kaplan (@LucasKaplan_) June 5, 2025
What follows is a smattering of some of his other drives. You’ll see that he has easy grab-and-go potential and can read advantages in the open floor. Essengue will boost any NBA transition offense as a play-finisher, but as this Bundesliga season progressed, he showed serious potential to boost transition offense as a play-starter.
However, when driving lanes were tight, he often pulled up in that short mid-range area, unable to give a bump or a spin to get all the way to the rim...
At this point, you might be asking, this guy is in consideration for the eighth pick?
Indeed, it's tough to sit through a 26-56 season, only to potentially draft a player whose best skills are off-ball cutting and doing defensive slides. Certainly, those skills win basketball games, but do they change a franchise?
The Sell: Noa Essengue was a good player in a decent European league in the 2024-25 season, a season during which he turned 18 years old. He is young enough to not view physical development as pie-in-the-sky, but perhaps inevitable. Though his dribble will certainly get ripped as often as he gets pushed over in his rookie season, it’s feasible to bet on Essengue becoming one of the very best slashers and transition finishers in the NBA, while covering an absurd amount of ground on defense, even if he’s not soaring high above the rim to block two shots a game.
Is that a franchise-changing player? Who knows, but it makes more sense to reject the premise of the question. Rather, that’s an extremely useful player who will amplify other good players, specifically more ball-dominant ones. Who says you need to draft or otherwise acquire the ball-handler first? When Essengue is slithering by defenders and occasionally dropping them off with a shoulder, shooting league-average from three with a high-release point, and nearing All-Defense teams on the other end, Brooklyn will wish they didn’t pass on such an obviously promising project, “rawness” be damned.
The Short: Taking a huge swing on physical development and shooting progression after Essengue played one decent season against middling competition may not be the most inspiring swing Brooklyn could take in year one of a rebuild. Maybe wait for a better pitch, eh?
Close your eyes and imagine it’s 2028: The Brooklyn Nets are trying to finally make the playoffs after half-decade of absences. Essengue is largely relegated to the corners, where he sneaks along the baseline for two nice back-cuts a night. Great, right? The rest of the time, he’s shooting 33% from deep and defenders really aren’t stressed about it. He runs the floor in transition for another couple points a night, thanks to a steal or two, but he’s just filling gaps and can’t be trusted to handle the ball in crunch-time.
Fine player, I guess.
Noa Essengue is a nice prospect. I can’t say I’ve watched enough to have a super strong opinion on his NBA future, and once again, I’m not a real NBA Draft analyst, but rather an NBA fan who swoops in during June to watch a couple hours of tape per prospect. Be on the lookout for more in-depth content on Essengue; I know my draft-focused colleagues at Swish Theory are on the case.
My own opinion: don’t let the lack of true primary upside fool you. At pick #8, getting a player who reasonably projects to be a great transition player and defender while having enough smarts to get by in the half-court ain’t such a bad thing. Especially because that player can fit in just about any lineup, even if he’s not the centerpiece of them. Noa Essengue wouldn’t be a terribly thrilling pick, but that’s not a value judgment.
As always, comment below if there’s a prospect you want to read about next.
For good measure, at 4:00 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon, I’ll be watching and discussing all the Essengue clips I have at my disposal. Join the Playback stream here.