Wait, should the Brooklyn Nets just take Derik Queen?

The prospect who has been flying under the radar since his NCAA season ended deserves real consideration from Brooklyn.

Some college basketball aficionados may recall the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament, when a 6’10” freshman caught the ball with his team trailing by one with just seconds remaining.

He turned right, drove, and after jumping off his right foot, banked in a runner that gave his team a dramatic victory…

Some experts may also recall when his Maryland Terrapins faced Rutgers, boating two surefire top-ten picks on February 9th. That same 6’10” freshman, who would win B10 Freshman of the Year, was the best player on the court in the matchup, posting a monster 29/15/5/1/1 on 9-of-16 shooting and personal parade to the free-throw line.

Are we absolutely sure the Brooklyn Nets shouldn’t just pick Derik Queen in the first round, whether at #8 or after another possible trade? Like, totally sure?

Queen is a one-and-done prospect who is historically old for a freshman; he’ll turn 21 this December. That only exacerbates concerns about his physique and (lack of) traditional athleticism; the man they affectionately(?) call Dairy Queen posted by far the slowest lane agility time at the NBA Draft Combine, and tied the lowest standing vertical leap at just 23.5 inches.

This shows up in his defensive tape. He can anticipate opponents’ moves and has active hands, but in rim-protecting situations, he often doesn’t finish plays with a real oomph…

Queen’s general disposition on defense is that of an older sibling dominating the backyard at a family reunion. He goads opponents into a drive and then tries to pick their pocket, or dares them to make a pass he feels he can intercept. To that end, his 3.8 block rate and 2.0 steal rate are decent enough, and there are some highlight plays mixed in with the gaffes.

In these first two plays vs. Purdue, he takes away a passing lane while successfully swiping at the ball, then makes a ridiculous block after pulling the chair on a 20-point-per-game scorer. Against a driver in the last clip though, two bad swipes at the ball leave him out of position. This is the Derik Queen experience…

But you know what else is part of the Queen experience? One of the best driving prospects in recent memory.

Though the NBA is trending toward a league dominated by dudes that can cover ground, using up every inch of the massive 47×54 foot box that half-court basketball is played in now, the league still needs guys to put pressure on the rim.

Queen does exactly that, blending face-up opportunities with closeout-attacks and even some post-ups. His fluidity, his footwork, and his touch on the move are mouth-watering…

Per Synergy Sports, Zion Williamson drove the ball and shot 2.81 times per game in his freshman year at Duke. He scored an awesome 0.946 points per possession. Julius Randle drove nearly four times a game and scored 0.888 PPP, the crux of the NBA potential he would eventually fulfill.

As a Terp, Queen drove the rock 4.33 times per game and scored a ludicrous 0.981 PPP. He’s an old freshman whose defense wavered and shot just 7-of-35 from three on the year, but he has an A+ skill.

It’s why my friend Daniel Olinger, an excellent Philadelphia 76ers writer, implored the team to take Queen with the third overall pick in this excellent piece.

Queen can play the 4 and play alongside centers at the next level not because he’s an obvious 38% three-point shooter hiding in plain sight, but because defenses have to be worried about making decisions with the ball in his hands. When teams feel like they can ignore a player on the perimeter is when their offense becomes inhibitive to the team, and though the lack of a respectable jumper can often lead to that, it’s not a perfect correlation. Queen is too terrifying building up steam and driving downhill at the basket for defenses to disrespect him. He’s willing to attack and score at every opportunity given. If a defense tried to play off against him and hide a roaming rim protector on him, Queen will take shots and find ways into the paint to make the defense non-viable.

This is hard to quibble with. Though Queen can occasionally can stuck up by a defender with a lower center of gravity, particularly when creating from a standstill, he dislodges everybody if he gets a shoulder on them. And bigger, slower-footed guys? Forget it.

On these rolls to the rim, recovering defenders just have no chance. He hits a floater in the first clip, then leads with his shoulder in the second…

Not to mention, the passing acumen is there, if not polished yet. Queen did have a sub-1 assist:TO ratio at Maryland, and often got way too lackadaisical with his passes, throwing one-handers across court or trying to fit into impossibly tight windows, stuff like that.

And yet, he made at least one jaw-dropping pass per game this past season, as Olinger shows us here…

There’s skips, there’s short-roll dimes, he hits some cutters, and crucially, the leading freshman defensive rebounder in the country can make an outlet pass to start the break.

That’s right, for all of Queen’s struggles against gravity, no freshman in the NCAA was a better defensive rebounder than him this past season. And his 9.0 offensive rebounding rate is no chopped liver…

His hands are pillowy soft, and despite that high center of gravity that occasionally lands him in trouble, he is strong as an ox.

His statistical profile, while imperfect, backs up everything we see on tape. Facing top-100 NCAA opponents, Queen shot 66% at the rim, 41% from the mid-range, and 75% from the line on nearly seven attempts a night.

That last number evinces some hope for his outside shooting, but to buy Queen, you have to accept that he doesn’t need to shoot to become a positive NBA player. That means games like this…

…are simply the cherry on top of his prospect profile.

If you listen to the betting markets and the lack of noise around this potential marriage, Derik Queen is quite unlikely to be a Brooklyn Net; he has far shorter odds to get selected at any of the neighboring picks.

There have been some whispers about his conditioning, and if the work he’ll need to do on his body to survive at the NBA level his feasible. Again, he will be a 21-year-old rookie for most of the year, and he made just seven 3-pointers all season.

I’m less worried about the defense than the shooting. Improvements are crucial, but the anticipation and hand-eye coordination is real, and that should allow him to survive with his 7’0.5” wingspan, even if he’ll never been a force on the interior.

The Sell: The Brooklyn Nets are starved for young, blue-chip talent, and Derik Queen will be available for them at #8 or elsewhere, in all likelihood. If the intel seems alright, this is what you’ve been waiting. Scared money don’t make none. Go bet on one of the great driving prospects of the past decade, the long-sleeved freshman with uncommon footwork and touch. He will create offense in nearly every play-type, from some isolations, to screen-setting, to being a hub for the DHO game, to handling the ball himself either in transition or inverted actions. That’s versatility right there! You bet on the talent, which is massive, and your player development.

The Short: He’s slow and can’t shoot. If he wasn’t always one of the oldest players in his grade, he never would have become such a tremendous driving prospect. Should the Nets really this kind of a lottery pick? Who cares about perceived upside if there are many likely outcomes where Queen doesn’t pan out at all in the NBA? There is no way Brooklyn sees him flying around the court at a playoff level, he moves far too slow in every aspect of the game.

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Here’s an insane post-up from Derik Queen, though he sadly smokes an open layup to ruin the clip. Oh well, I’m using it anyway…

Queen’s defender successfully pulls the chair on him as he he spins right, but somehow, DQ remains on balance and doesn’t travel. He reacts to the lack of contact and turns it into a half-spin, stepping through the help defense and getting to a righty layup…which he then smokes. Given that he shot nearly 70% at the rim on the year in total, it’s not so worrying.

The concerns about Derik Queen are very real. Also, super old freshman usually aren’t my cup of tea. But these question about Queen will allow him, a stupendously coordinated 6’10” athlete with uncommon skills, to fall to #8 and likely further.

No major mock draft has the Brooklyn Nets taking him. I don’t think that’s anything to be upset about. But man, if this is all just smoke and Brooklyn does end up picking him on Wednesday night, well, it’d be hard to feel upset about that too. I’m not sure if Derik Queen will be good in the NBA, but he is at least special. And that counts for something.