Could the Nets select Cedric Coward in the 2025 NBA Draft?
Could the Nets select Cedric Coward in the 2025 NBA Draft?
The Brooklyn Nets head into the 2025 NBA Draft with four first-round picks to use, meaning that they will be bringing in a lot of talent from this class. Brooklyn has three picks outside of the Lottery and with the team needing as much of a talent infusion as possible, they could consider taking a player that is taking full advantage of the predraft process.
Forward Cedric Coward, who came into the Draft with the intention of maintaining his college eligibility after agreeing to transfer to Duke, has decided to stay in the Draft, according to ESPN's Jonathan Givony. Coward's draft stock has risen to the point where Bleacher Report NBA Draft expert Jonathan Wasserman projects the San Antonio Spurs to take Coward with the 14th overall pick.
"NBA teams learned that the injury wasn't a setback," Coward said, per Givony. "I got better and became more profound in all the different details of my game. I improved tremendously in aspects that I needed to work on, which showed in my athletic testing and shooting. I'm stronger mentally, physically and emotionally now."
Coward, listed at 6-foot-6 and 213 pounds, is coming off a senior season at Washington State where he averaged 17.7 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.7 blocks per game while shooting 55.7% from the field and 40.0% from three-point land. While the 2024-25 season was his senior season, Coward did have another season of eligibility given that he had to redshirt this past season due to a shoulder injury.
With Coward not going back to college, he will be entering the Draft was one of the players looking to take advantage of the momentum he has built since the Draft Combine in Chicago earlier this month. "Scouts at the combine were acknowledging the fact that Cedric Coward could go first round based on his Kawhi-Leonard-like measurements, convincing shooting stroke and the tantalizing highlights from his brief six-game season," Wasserman wrote on Coward.
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Advertisement And though Miller was still playing at a high level, it has taken another quarter-century to make it back. The journey hasn't been an easy one. This Pacers team rallied to eliminate some other snake-bitten opponents. They knocked out the 2021 NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks, the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers and the rival Knicks. The second final chapter begins Thursday in Oklahoma City. The expectations were different 25 years ago. Donnie Walsh revamped Indiana's roster by surrounding Miller with younger players following the 1999-2000 season, and four seasons later the Pacers posted the league's best record in 2003-04. They wound up losing the conference final in six games to Detroit. Advertisement Then came the franchise-changing Malice in the Palace brawl in November 2004. Several lengthy suspensions gutted the team, derailing Miller's last title run while sending the franchise into a downward spiral. Larry Bird fired coach Rick Carlisle, his friend and ex-teammate, two years later and his departure was followed by a rash of devastating injuries. Danny Granger's budding career was cut short by knee tendinitis. Paul George suffered a compound fracture in his right leg in 2014 and he was traded to Oklahoma City in 2017. Two years later, All-Star guard Victor Oladipo ruptured his right quadriceps tendon and was subsequently traded, too. Myles Turner experienced most of the ups and downs of that decade from the Pacers locker room, and it only made his opportunity to hug Miller and Nancy Leonard, the widow of former Pacers longtime coach and broadcaster Bobby 'Slick' Leonard, so much sweeter after winning the conference crown. Advertisement 'It was just pure excitement, pure validation," Turner said. 'Just all the years, all the hate, all the love, everything in between. So, man, in that moment, it was just pure exuberance.' Turner was a pivotal piece — not the central one — when president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard embarked on another rebuild midway through the 2021-22 season to form the core of this year's squad. He started by dealing All-Star forward Domantas Sabonis to Sacramento for Haliburton. Five months later, Indiana acquired forward Aason Nesmith from Boston for Malcolm Brogdon. And when Pritchard sent Bruce Brown to Toronto for Pascal Siakam in January 2024, Pritchard figured the Pacers finally had their big three. Fans were skeptical, but the Pacers ushered in a new era of basketball, one that combined Indiana's favorite sport with its longtime auto racing tradition, creating a track-like pace brand of basketball. Advertisement In some ways, these Pacers are a throwback to their ABA roots — fast, high scoring, flurries of 3-pointers and made-for-television entertainment right down to the dance team. 'The pace, it just fits who I am as a person, like the way I play the game,' said Siakam, who won a championship ring with Toronto. 'We have a lot of people who look down on us as an underdog and that's my style. I like that because that's been me my whole life.' The Pacers will open as the underdog against the Thunder, the team George landed with all those years ago. Two former ABA powers, San Antonio and Denver, have won NBA titles. But if the Pacers can capture the Larry O'Brien trophy, they would be the league's only team to be crowned ABA and NBA champions. 'This is not the time to be popping champagne,' said Carlisle, who led the Dallas Mavericks to the 2010-11 title. 'Getting to the NBA Finals is an accomplishment. But if you start looking at it that way, you'll go into it with the wrong mindset. When you get to this point of the season, its two teams, it's one goal so it becomes an all or nothing thing.' ___ AP NBA: Michael Marot, The Associated Press
