The Phoenix Suns traded for their pick back in the 2025 NBA Draft and took Duke center Khaman Maluach with the 10th pick. With his rookie season nearly complete, did the Suns make the right choice? Or would another center available to them have made more sense?
Answer: it's complicated.
Who has been best in the 2025 class?
Evaluating a draft class as a whole is a worthwhile exercise. How is a rookie performing compared to the league as a whole, to their position - but also compared to their classmates? Did a team make the right decision? If not, what led to their mistake and can be corrected in future drafts? These are vital questions to ask.
One way to approach that conversation is to re-rank the players from a draft class, creating a new "big board" that is updated with a season's worth of data. How players actually perform in the NBA is the most important data point you can have on a prospect, so actual NBA minutes are pure gold for evaluating young players.
A more fun way to do that same exercise is then to "re-draft" the class, going team by team and choosing players according to the updated information. Some players drop, others are big risers, and occasionally someone will go to the same exact team. We did just that exercise on our sister site Hoops Habit this weekend.
The first nine picks were shuffled around, but for the most part the situation was the same for the Suns when they came onto "the clock" in the re-draft. The only center to go in the first nine picks was undersized big man Collin Murray-Boyles. That left the Suns to pick their preferred center from the entire class - just as it was last June.
The Suns drafted Malauch
Then, they chose Khaman Maluach, a teenage phenom out of the South Sudan who was massive defensively and raw offensively. Would they make the same choice with the advantage of hindsight? Or would one of the other center prospects make more sense? There are a plethora of options: Derik Queen out of Maryland, Thomas Sorber out of Georgetown, Joan Beringer and Maxime Reynaud from France, Ryan Kalkbrenner from Creighton.
Choosing Maluach again would be defensible - or to put it another way, there is a case to be made that he is the best of the true centers from this rookie class. He has come on lately with Mark Williams sidelined by injury, showing off his imposing defensive presence and displaying flashes of production.
In one game he had five blocks; in another, nine rebounds. He scored a season-best 12 points to go with nine rebounds and two blocks in his most recent game on Saturday night against the Utah Jazz. He is raw and has a long way to go, but there are flashes - and his size isn't going anywhere.
Should the Suns have drafted Derik Queen?
In the re-draft, however, the Suns went in a different direction. They took Maryland center Derik Queen, who is the reverse of Maluach: refined offensively with a high skill level and real playmaking chops, but with a massive defensive deficiency.
Queen erupted early on in his rookie season for the New Orleans Pelicans, and then has faded more into a reserve role as the year has marched on. He is averaging for the season 11.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 3.6 assists and is capable of great offensive feats and stretches of mind-boggling turnovers and missed shots. He is a polarizing player.
The upside on offense could be immense, however, and there are very few 6'9" bigs putting up triple doubles as a rookie. Queen's highs have been magnificent. Perhaps Maluach brings that level of impact one day on both ends, but Queen has brought it - albeit only in flashes - as a rookie.
The ceilings are low enough on players like Kalkbrenner and Reynaud as to hold them outside of the true conversation. Thomas Sorber has missed his entire rookie season with a foot injury. Joan Beringer has played sparingly behind the Minnesota Timberwolves' entrneched bigs but has been exceptional in those few minutes. Any could end up being the best center in the class.
Maluach needs to continue improving to claim that title - it's not out reach, but it's not a given, either. He will get a couple more weeks of game reps, and then enter an important offseason to level up and prove himself worthy of the starting spot.
Looking back, it may turn out to be a mistake that the Suns didn't go in a different direction - or it could prove to be a slam dunk. Only time will tell.