Bulls Take a Swing on Essengue In NBA Draft: Can Chicago Finally Get It Right?

Bulls Take a Swing on Essengue In NBA Draft: Can Chicago Finally Get It Right?

let’s talk about the nba’s central division a 2025 nba draft recap michael bolton thanks josh it’s michael bolton here and it’s time for another episode of the locked on fantasy basketball podcast let’s get to it let’s get to it indeed you are locked on fantasy your daily nba fantasy podcast part of the locked on podcast network your team every day hello and welcome to the locked on fantasy basketball podcast brought to you by basketball monster my name is josh lloyd and pizza does belong on pineapple i’m also the lead fantasy analyst at basketball.com and today’s episode is brought to you by fanduel right now new customers get $150 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins thank you also for making lock on fantasy basketball your first listen every day we are free we are available on all platforms all right another trip around the nba the fourth division i’m recording might not be the fourth that you see in terms of draft recaps yes things have happened in free agency and i’m recording this on the opening day of free agency there’s weird stuff happening brook lopez clint capella michael pter jr cam johnson there’s a bunch of stuff happening there’ll be a show that you’ve already seen i’m just giving you the lay of the land of where my brain is scrambled to we’re talking about the central division in the nba draft recap i i love that you’re here it’s great that you guys are here where i i want everyone always to be um watching this show and a part of things but i’ll i’ll be honest with you right now not a lot going on in this division not a lot happening in terms of the draft pretty pretty poor pretty boring stuff always talk about it of course but not a lot going on so this is one you maybe you played at a no don’t play it a million times play it a million times to show how much you love boring um let’s talk about the first team here it’s my team it’s not it used to be but they’re not my team anymore they’re the chicago bulls cuz they are putrid and they have been putrid for a long time and their uh entire organization smells like a sweaty ass crack majority of the time because the owner is dreadful the general manager is dreadful the front office is dreadful it’s all bad but i gave them a b for their draft hall i like them picking noah essen at pick 12 now essen is going to be incredibly raw he is going to be i don’t think we’ll see much of him honestly in year one i don’t know whether he gets g-league time and the bulls have been a team that had 35,000 guards and no forwards and now they have got some fors you got bzelis there you’ve got whatever it is that pat williams is and now you bring in essen now he is incredibly young he doesn’t turn 19 until december so he’s going to start this season as an 18-year-old he got to the line a million times playing for ratio farm the shooting yeah that’s not very good he’s got some passing skill some defensive skill his driving is really strong i think that in time bales and sn will form a really good 34 combo yeah with bzalis being able to play at the five at times will sn ever be able to be like a 28 usage guy i don’t think so i think there will be moments though where he can push it to a 22 or 23 as a third offensive option we got to get the shooting there though but that ability to draw fouls at the age of 18 in a professional league is unbelievable like that is that is something where you should go oh that’s interesting a player very different players very different players let me get just don’t get confused here a player who had incredibly high free throw drawing skills went undrafted and is now a really good player is austin reeves that stuff can translate pretty well i’m not saying that it will and there’s a lot of other stuff that needs to be worked on with snk but i do like him it is just going to take a lot of time they’ve still got josh giddy they brought in isaac aoro they brought back trey jones um kobe white is still there at the time of me recording this there’s still a lot of stuff that could happen and snk is just not going to play minutes julian phillips is going to be in that mix too it’s one for down the line but i do like them making that selection they picked an australian at pick 45 and they traded him away i would have preferred they kept roco zakaski cuz i think he’s got a lot lot of upside nothing against old mate locky orb who went at pick 55 he’s already going to be placed on a two-way he’s got some shooting concerns i believe played in the states in college for a bit and then came back to the nbl i think he’s only 21 um i don’t know that he’s an nba player necessarily but we’ll see the bulls last season just never used their g-league player play players at all shout out if you can name their g-league guys at the top of my head emanuel miller was one of them yeah that’s a real person um god who were the other ones who were the other two-way contracts last season i they played like about four minutes combined i honestly can’t remember i’m going to look it up i just can’t remember they had jir young they had adama sonogga at one point as well and ej liddell even like it just nobodyies anyway anyway lachlan lachlan orriick picked a 55 on a 2-way he just i don’t think he’s going to play they got caleb grill the barbecue on an exhibit 10 and wuga popppler one of the better names in the draft process i think wuga had a he he could have been drafted the year before came back he’s fine like these guys i don’t think they’re going to make much of a difference i think grill is solid i had him on my big board uh you i did as well in that second round range they’re fine picks i like the snk pick i think everything they did was fine it’s not going to be groundbreaking it’s not going to destroy other teams hopes and dreams or anything like that it’s the bulls for god’s sake but overall i think that they did very well there getting a a b from me which i’m sure they care about the most of anything in the world let’s take a look at cleveland which is possibly the most boring drive class in the league maybe or maybe the no not the clippers the knicks was pretty bad actually uh another aussie in this uh in this division with tyrese proctor going at pick 49 to the cavs celio nyang who was someone who was a bit of a a lot not a late riser because that’s not really how it works but i didn’t have him on my initial draft board i had to put him on in the last week or so before the draft and good thing i did cuz he got drafted pick 58 to celang he is a um a wing player played over in italy last season i would be very surprised i don’t know that we’ve heard any information on this or i don’t think i have at this point you might have heard now i doubt that he’s coming over and going to have any sort of impact this season but nyang played 20 minutes a night for uh what is it for torrento in the italian league he averaged eight points a game he shot 31% on threes but on incredibly small attempts the steal rate is fine with him like he’s a a wing who like is a defense first sort of a wing i don’t think there’s anything interesting there and then cheney johnson and old mate norchad omier on the exhibit 10’s like i give them a c overall because the proctor pick is good i i like tyres proctor they did they’ve traded for lonzo ball obviously they’ve got craig porter but they did lose ty jerome in free agency there will be a free agency show that you’ve already seen so i don’t need to go into those details here um proctor is someone that i thought had a chance in previous years you to be to push a little bit higher in the draft process he didn’t i think he’s a a capable player who shot you really well from three across his uh ncaa career oh sorry his last season he shot 41% from three he played 30 minutes a night on that juke team the assist numbers aren’t particularly high and they dropped when cooper flag arrived and conipa was there he took a bit of a backseat but i think it is possible to see um proctor who’s now 21 being a third string point guard maybe a backup point guard at best and when you’re dealing with picks this low i think cleveland did okay to get something out of it and i think that’s where proctor is something out of it useful it’s not bad it’s not it’s not great it’s it’s fine which is literally the going to be the discussion about this entirety of the entirety of this division today’s episode is also brought to you by fanil summer sports are in full swing summer is in full swing and it might be baseball that you win to might be golf might be the wnba might be nascar might be soccer whatever it is fanduel is the best way to get in on that action you’re following along with all these sports all the time and you’ve got knowledge about them i’m sure so you can put that knowledge to the test you can do that same game parlays you can do it with money lines and spreads and totals and futures and all of that across all these sports plus future bets on the nba on the 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one first round pick in this division oh my god we did um the detroit pistons at pick 37 they picked chaz laneir now i don’t know whether the pistons had advanced warning about malik beasley and his uh gambling habits i’m not sure about that and even of the time of me recording this i don’t know with beasley’s going to be okay to play if he’s going to sign in detroit i got no idea i like laneier he is a little bit older of a prospect he’s 23 but he is just a huge volume shooter and we saw the success of having volume shooters around kade cunningham and how good it was tim hardaway didn’t shoot well but he shot them malik beasley did shoot well and he did shoot a lot of them having those guys around and like they’ve missed a couple of their free agent targets already in detroit he’s 6’5 he is a senior but he hit 40% on his threes and made almost four per game per 36 minutes he doesn’t do a huge amount else lier but i think for what detroit needed to do him at that spot he could have easily gone six seven spots higher he could have snuck into the first round lanier he is a player that i think can have a sizable nba career as a solid shooting guard who’s not disgraceful defensively and has got some size and they’re drafting like what could have easily been considered the best player available at that spot and also a guy that fits their team really well so i do like what they did there i give them an a minus just because that was their only pick they haven’t signed any two-way guys any exhibit 10 guys so laneier at that spot w now of course when you compare that to other drafts the quality of the class is not very big and i get that but you understand i think by now the way that i do these draft classes and this draft class grade you had pick 37 you nailed pick 37 good for you like you couldn’t ask for anything more the fit is great i like the player i think there’s value in the pick what more could you do it’s not about the volume of players it’s not about the overall quality of the players compared like cuz obviously cooper flag would get an a+ and chazania would get a d but that’s not what we’re about the other guys on their team i do like bryce williams from nebraska i thought there was a chance that he could have been a draftable guy or even gotten a 2-way and he still may get a 2-way bryce williams and these other players here have signed onto the summer league team for the pistons dawson garcia zakai ziggler great name and tj madlock also a great name not sure these guys are going to mean anything but williams would be the one that i would pay just a small amount of attention to i think that he could again work his way into a two-way there was a possibility that bryce could have been drafted of course he wasn’t and he is just on this summer league team he’s a 67 wing bryce johnson who thought shot 37% on threes last season 39 the year before that 40 the year before that transferred from charlottes had two years at nebraska he is old as a lot of players in this draft are but like some really solid shooting numbers which is interesting and yeah again just grabbing someone in i think that there is a small again it is a small chance but there is a small chance that something uh good comes of it let’s now talk about another team in this central division because that would make a lot of sense when we’re talking about the central division i this indiana pacers team is interesting to deal with obviously they had picked 23 they traded it to the pelicans to get their own first round pick back for the following season then the tyres hallebertton injury happened so they protected themselves in advance now did they know that there was a risk that tyres hallebertton was going to pop his achilles i mean yes they obviously did because he had a strain carve and that he’s a very big precursor to torn achilles did they trade for that pick back with joe dumar and troy weaver understanding that there was a bad worst case scenario that hallebertton wouldn’t be there i’m not going to rule that out i think that is entirely possible they said “all right we’ve got pick 23 here we could trade it and maybe we’ve got maybe it’s 27 next season or what if the absolute worst comes in and we try and insulate ourselves from worst case scenario of hallebertton pinging that achilles and then we save ourselves a little bit that would be it’s it’s morbid to think that way but it would be incredibly incredibly smart gming and front office work taking advantage of the dumbest front office in the nba and also insuring yourself against something you desperately hope doesn’t happen when the downside risk of it is low and the upside risk of it of it happening which actually what happening i said the upside risk he obviously don’t want hallebertton hurt but the upside risk of that pick coming towards you is huge so that i i don’t know this for sure and i don’t know if it’ll ever come out but i think it’s wgm to take advantage of a terrible front office um understanding to minimize your downside risk huge and then i love what they did in round two they were able to trade for pick number 38 and they drafted cam jones now some of you may not know cam jones he is one of these guys that i like this sort of a player in general he played at marquette he’s an older prospect i’m not always a guy that loves older prospects i think you know that part about me as well um but he’s a combo guard he’s like 6’4 he’s 23 years of age he averaged really strong numbers but what he did is he was like “all right what do you need this season i’ll become the point guard.” he wasn’t a point guard in the past but he averaged over six assists per 36 minutes he said “all right i’ll do that i’ll sacrifice my shooting numbers i’ll sacrifice the role that i’ve been playing more of an off ball guy to be the point guard and he did it and the pacers like this sort of a guy a guy that can move between the one and the two a guy that can handle the ball the guy that can play off ball i think those shooting numbers are fine he shot 31% let me rephrase they’re not fine they’re horrific i think he’s a fine shooter i think he’ll be okay when he’s not put into this role which you’ll never have a 29 role but having someone like that like they got ben shepard obviously who’s not really someone that can transition to that role ben rathan neither but nepard can and just having another one of these guys these rotatable changeable guard type players and and jones’s ability to to transition into different roles scale up scale down shoot a passer do all of the stuff he needs to do on ball off ball i think he’s great i had jones hovering around the edge of the first round that’s where he went i like the pick it makes a lot of sense on this team with rick carlo and i think he’ll be able to play off tyres hallebertton when hallebertton returns i don’t know that it works out but like again you’re talking about ben shepard and these sort of players there where it is there is a chance that jones ends up a better player than that he might not but there is a chance he ends up there so taking that flyer on him um i do i do really like that and i i think that that is the perfect sort of player for uh old mates what do you call them the indiana pacers i i like it all right now this is one of the i gave them a b+ by the way i haven’t mentioned what i gave them b+ i did not have any i i wrote pick 55 it was actually pick 54 the pacers selected talon peter i’d never heard of this man i had no idea who he was congratulations to him though because he got drafted he was a bench player for liberty liberty he’s a 6’4 23-year-old senior ton peter his numbers are insane he shot 45% on threes on almost eight attempts per 36 he shot 58% from the field overall he had an shooting of 72 as a 6’4 guard coming off the bench for liberty what that efficiency is actually unheard of he doesn’t do a huge amount else his steel rate is fine his scoring numbers are solid his assist to turnover is pretty good again do the pacers like these sort of efficient guards these these 6’4 guards sure his rebound rate for that size is good i i don’t he probably is nothing he’s probably nothing but i’d never heard of this guy and i’m intrigued because that efficiency is like wow what are these numbers and if there’s anything in that i don’t think there will be if there is that’s it’s somewhere interesting to go they signed three exhibit 10 guys rj felton is unfortunately not raymond felton’s son but he is his cousin he is his cousin there you go fat face ray cousin um felton was a good shooter for east carolina and then they got steven ashworth and samson johnson on exhibit 10 i gave them overall a b+ i liked what the pacers did the tailon peter one who bloody knows man we’ll see cam jones i really like a lot and the exhibit 10 guys whatever we’ll see how that ends up playing out now now we get on to the milwaukee bucks and their team has been um i won’t say thrown into chaos because it was always likely well it’s straight into chaos due to the damian lillard injury free agency is weird they’re going to have like their number one and number two usage guys with the things the way they currently stand for me at the moment again apologies if this doesn’t make sense longterm cuz other stuff has happened it’s going to be bobby poris and kevin porter jr which is just disgusting like it’s it’s going to be so shocking i they don’t have any rim protection apart from giannis they don’t have anything is gonna be bad at the time of me recording this and they didn’t have a first round pick and it’s glenn rivers and he wouldn’t play rookies anyway i liked bogleub marovic i thought that he was an interesting um upside bet play he’s a 6’11 power forward/c center who can pass who can rebound pretty well who can shoot a little bit like that stereotypical european big man but he adds in passing skills good from the free throw line 39% on threes 55 overall he’s not yet 20 he’s about to turn 20 he had 22 usage playing for mega i i i that is a really interesting guy along with what they did with tyler smith picking him last season great love that front office work you’ll just never see these guys play now maybe they have to this season because who knows who knows any something crazy may have happened with jiannis right now as i’m talking i’ve got no idea but i do know that brook lopez is in there and this team is incredibly old marovic i i don’t mind the pick i think it’s a pretty strong pick to get bogalube right bogey can develop into something good like nicola yovic he’s a bit bigger than him uh i think he’s a better shooter than yoic maybe not quite as good of a of a of a ball handler but overall like we’re still a little bit away from any sort of impact happening here overall i do give the bucks a b minus as obie loses his mind for whatever reason um it’s just it’s hard to s sort of fully understand the bucks and the front office and how glenn is going to use these guys they signed mark sears from alabama to be uh a two-way contract player sears is someone that could have possibly come out last season their point guard depth at the moment again i don’t know where this is going to go but it’s porter it’s rollins it’s sears i guess he’s very undersized 6’1 but someone who is incredibly um decorated in terms of skills he shot 44% from three last season dropped to 35 this season he his numbers did decline so i thought he should have come out after the 23 24 season but his numbers all dropped he’s obviously a year older now but you get that nil money his efficiency fell away and i think that’s part of the reason why he didn’t get drafted i still think that he can be a useful player he’s a solid enough passer with some shooting ability mark sears but it’s just again it’s the it’s the bucks it’s a two-way guy they’re never going to play um summer league guys they got terrence edwards jr wade taylor ivth and david joplin good collection of names not sure about them as basketball players but a good collection of names nonetheless and that is the incredibly boring central division one first round pick and that’s noah essen a bunch of teams that are sort of weird and won’t play rookie it’s just it’s it’s a very very weird division i’ve got two more divisions to do uh well i i shouldn’t even say that cuz i know that i’ve recorded some and then posted them out of order so my bad but anyway you have them all done really soon i hope free agency is going well for your team um i hope that you’ve enjoyed everything that’s going on this offseason and summer leagues coming up i don’t even know why i’m waffling with this but guys we are done here thank you so much for listening everyone see you [Music] hey hey [Music]

NBA Fantasy Basketball players — the Central Division just reshaped its future.Josh Lloyd breaks down how the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, and Milwaukee Bucks handled the 2025 NBA Draft — and what it means for your fantasy teams.

The Bulls take Noa Essengue at 12, hoping for defensive upside.

The Cavaliers keep it low-key with Tyrese Proctor — is there any fantasy relevance?

Detroit earns an A with Chaz Lanier at 37, a move that could push them toward playoff contention and spark real fantasy intrigue.

Indiana trades down and grabs Kam Jones, banking on fit instead of ceiling.

Milwaukee selects Bogoljub Markovic — shades of Nikola Jovic, but is there enough juice for dynasty formats?

Josh goes team-by-team, grading the picks, projecting early roles, and calling out who might surprise in standard or deep leagues. He also dives into undrafted signings that could end up being fantasy relevant by February.

👉 Watch or listen now for the full breakdown — and get a leg up on your competition before these rookies hit summer league.

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0:00 Central Division draft recap
1:32 Chicago Bulls draft analysis
5:05 Cleveland Cavaliers draft analysis
8:38 Detroit Pistons draft analysis
12:11 Indiana Pacers draft analysis
17:14 Milwaukee Bucks draft analysis
20:17 Conclusion