Chaz Lanier 2025 NBA Draft Profile

Chaz Lanier 2025 NBA Draft Profile

We are less than three weeks away from the 2025 NBA Draft! Today, we will be previewing Baylor’s Tennessee’s Chaz Lanier! Let’s not waste any more time and jump right into it!

Height (no shoes): 6’3.75 (6’9 wingspan, 8’5.5 standing reach)

Weight: 205.6

Draft Age: 23.5

Position: Guard

Despite finishing as a finalist for Mr. Tennessee Basketball award in high school, Lanier was a zero-star recruit out of Ensworth High School in Nashville, Tenn. He joined North Florida, where he spent four seasons. In his career, he averaged 8.9 points and 3.1 rebounds in 23.3 minutes, including 19.7 points on 51.0/44.0/88.0 shooting splits in his final season. As a senior with the Ospreys, he earned first-team All-ASUN, scoring double figure points in all but one game.

With one year of eligibility left, Lanier transferred to Tennessee, where, like Koby Brea (draft profile here), he was one of the best shooters in the conference. He picked up right where he left off, averaging 18.0 points on 39.5 percent shooting from 3-point range. Let’s dive into his profile below!

Strengths:

Like Brea, Lanier is one of the best high-volume 3-point shooters in this class.

Lanier is a flamethrower. He led the SEC in total 3-point makes (123), where he was comfortable off movement and off-the catch. At 6-foot-5, Lanier had a very quick release with decent lift and fluid body control. His release is noticeably higher off the bounce than it is off the catch, but I thought he did a good job getting his shot off regardless.

The Tennessee alum very good at squaring up his body running off screens. You have to keep eyes on him at all times. Lanier is more than capable of putting the ball on the deck with the situation allows it, but he’s a deadeye sharpshooter who explodes out of his base. There’s a tendency where he’ll take tough shots (out of the mid-range)–but he makes them.

At any point point of time, Lanier could get hot. His confidence was (almost) never shot whether he was 7-for-8 or 1-for-8. He was fairly efficient from every area of the floor in the halfcourt, making 57.4 percent of his attempts at the rim, 42.9 percent from the mid-range and 38.3 percent from 3-point range, according to Databallr.

The 23-year-old has an NBA ready-made body, but is a good-not-great defender. It’s not necessarily a strength nor a weakness, but I think Lanier walks in Day 1 as an average defender with relative upside.

Koby Brea 2025 NBA Draft Profile

Weaknesses:

Chaz Lanier was a very limited playmaker and facilitator. That wasn’t his role. He could put the ball on the deck–he had a good center of gravity and didn’t turn the ball over very much–but he wasn’t consistently making reads off-screens.

I also don’t love guards who settle for tough 2s; while he was efficient, Lanier, an undersized 2-guard, did that a little too much for my liking at time. I don’t think he’ll be overly reliant on that kind of shot diet because of how prolific of a 3-point shooter he was. But that was a general concern of mine for the games I watched because of how (un)translatable that is.

I think he will hold up defensively, but that is a question mark. He has average foot speed, but he has a sturdy frame and a plus-five wingspan–which is huge. I don’t project him to be a multipositional defender, but I think there’s a world where he defends at least two positions well enough at the NBA level

Projection: Second Round

I have a late first, early second-round grade on Lanier. I was impressed with what I saw throughout the season. Outside of his Elite 8 performance against Houston, Lanier helped himself out a lot throughout the season; I always look for in-season growth, and Lanier showed enough for me to justify taking him in the top-35/40, without question.

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