French forward Noah Penda is declaring for the 2025 NBA draft, agent Francois Nyam tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN (Twitter link).
Penda has spent the 2024/25 season playing in France’s top domestic league, the LNB Élite. In 24 games with Le Mans, he has averaged 10.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 steals in 25.8 minutes per contest, with a shooting slash line of .431/.292/.753.
The 20-year-old combo forward comes off the board at No. 32 overall in ESPN’s latest mock draft (Insider link), and No. 24 in the latest mock from Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report, making him a potential late first-round pick.
Arkansas junior Adou Thiero is also declaring for the 2025 draft (Instagram link). Theiro, who goes No. 26 overall in ESPN’s mock and No. 39 in Bleacher Report’s, didn’t say anything about keeping his remaining college eligibility, so it sounds like he’s committed to staying in the draft.
An athletic forward, Thiero had a productive season for the Razorbacks, averaging 15.6 PPG, 5.8 RPG, 1.9 APG and 1.6 SPG on .545/.256/.686 shooting in 27 games (27.5 MPG). He’s viewed as a project at this point, per ESPN’s Jeremy Woo, but has considerable upside if he can improve in certain areas (ball-handling, shooting, among others).
Here are a couple more draft early entrants:
- Auburn freshman Tahaad Pettiford will declare for the draft while maintaining his college eligibility, according to Givony (Twitter link). The 6’1″ point guard goes No. 39 overall in ESPN’s mock. He averaged 11.6 PPG, 2.2 RPG, 3.0 APG and 0.9 SPG on .421/.366/.804 shooting in 38 games (22.9 MPG) in ’24/25, helping the Tigers advance to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
- Junior forward Tae Davis, who spent this past season with Notre Dame, will enter the draft with the goal of securing a guaranteed contract, agent Ron Shade tells Givony. If Davis withdraws from the draft, he will transfer to Oklahoma, Givony adds. Davis goes undrafted in the mocks from ESPN and Bleacher Report.
When prospects realize how loaded the draft is they see the opportunity to slide down to playoff teams. The NBA will be getting younger a little quicker in the next couple years.
Really big fan of Tahaad but he definitely needs to go back has lottery potential no reason to go in the second round and waste away in G League
He’s not ready for the NBA. He was awful in their last game, he knew he was having a bad game, and made a bunch of selfish decisions with the basketball in his hands because he wasn’t having a positive impact on the floor.
Talented, but way too immature for professional basketball at this moment.