Kadary Richmond 2025 NBA Draft Profile

Kadary Richmond 2025 NBA Draft Profile

We are less than one week away from the 2025 NBA Draft! Today, we will be previewing St. John’s guard Kadary Richmond. Let’s jump right into it!

Height (no shoes): 6’4.25 (6’9.5 wingspan, 8’7 standing reach)

Weight: 205.8 lbs

Draft Age: 23.8

Position: Guard

A four-star recruit out of Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., Kadary Richmond was once a top-100 recruit and the fourth-best player in New Hampshire in the 2020 recruiting class, according to 247sports.com. He chose Syracuse over Florida State, Cincinnati, Iowa State, UConn and Seton Hall, among others. He played just one season at Syracuse alongside Joseph Girard and Buddy Boeheim before transferring to Seton Hall, where he became a full-time starter in 2021-22.

As a sophomore, Richmond averaged 8.8 points and 4.1 assists across 25.9 minutes per game, but his role grew over his final two seasons. He grew into one of the conference’s most productive players in 2023-24 before transferring to St. John’s as a super senior, where his overall efficiency fell off a cliff despite being one of the Rick Pitino’s lead cogs throughout the season.

Let’s dive into his profile!

Profile:

You could make the case that Richmond is one of the best defensive prospects in this class.

He’ll get up in your jersey and try to disrupt everything you do at the point-of-attack. His hands are quicker than lightning and he’s remarkably active in the passing lanes; he’s a perfect point-of-attack defender with good screen navigation at 6-foot-5. He’s a bulldog defensively.

Richmond is also a very good passer; he was the Johnnies’ best playmaker last year with good passing accuracy and decision-making. He’s excellent at reading the floor, sporting a 2.6 assist-to-turnover last year and a 1.91 AST:TO for his career. Richmond’s also a very good rebounder at 6-foot-5, finishing with a better defensive rebounding percentage than big Zuby Ejiofor. I love his motor and activity at all times.

All that said, Richmond’s a bad shooter and his jump shot fell off a cliff last season. Believe it or not, he shot just 17.5 percent from 3-point range and 53.6 percent from the free-throw line. He has a hitch as he’s flowing into the top of release off-the-catch; unlike most prospects, Richmond looks more comfortable and fluid as a pull-up jump shooter than as a spot-up threat.

Most of his game is predicated on getting to the rim, but you can’t survive in the NBA if you can’t shoot. In all fairness, over his first four years, he shot 33.7 percent from deep and 75.4 percent from the charity stripe on low volume. Perhaps there’s some positive regression back to the mean if he continues to work on his spot-up mechanics.

While Richmond does a good job leveraging his strength in the lane, he’s a two-footed, below-the-rim athlete. He tested well in the G-League Elite Camp with a 34-inch max vert, but his tape doesn’t suggest he has much vertical explosion and his rim efficiency (53.7 percent in halfcourt) was pretty poor.

Projection: UDFA

There’s no question that Richmond is an elite defender who can rebound and pass. I have a hard time taking a swing on one of the oldest prospects in this class who can’t shoot and doesn’t have a great track record of shooting–especially in today’s pace-and-space era. He’s never been a high volume long-range shooter, but his lack of shooting upside limits his playmaking upside, especially on ball-screens where defenders will have no problem sitting in or near the paint.

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