John Hollinger put Cameron Boozer at No. 1 on his Top 15 NBA Draft prospects list, placing the Duke standout forward ahead of the rest of a class he described as unusually flat at the top.
Hollinger said Boozer, 18, had “destroyed college basketball” and noted that he is the youngest college prospect in the draft. That vote of confidence came in a New York Times piece that also framed the 2025-26 NBA Draft as loaded but without a singular LeBron or Wemby at the top, a sign that the race for the first pick may remain open longer than usual.
The ranking carries extra weight because it comes a year after Cooper Flagg was highlighted in similar fashion as a top Duke prospect. Boozer now steps into that same spotlight with less than a full season separating him from the comparison and the expectation that follows it.
But Hollinger’s praise was not blind. He also wrote that Boozer struggles to elevate and finish against length around the rim, a reminder that even the player he ranked first still has a clear scouting-file flaw. That tension matters in a draft class where there is no obvious runaway favorite and where every projected top pick is being measured against a thinner margin for error.
Hollinger said he has become higher on drafting centers than he has been in past years, another clue to how he is weighing positional value in this class. He also noted that several sophomores and juniors, including Duke’s Patrick Ngngba, pulled out of draft consideration, narrowing the field around the prospects who remain. For Boozer, the result is simple: he is already being treated not just as the best player in the room, but as the player everyone else in the room is being compared with.
The real question now is not whether Boozer belongs in the conversation. It is how long he can stay alone at the top once teams start testing that No. 1 grade against the parts of his game that still need work.
