Picks, Pops & Rolls | Dec. 2025

Introducing: Picks, Pops & Rolls

Basketball is a beautiful game - in the way it’s played, in the moments it creates, and in the stories and narratives that become its legacy. In many ways, it’s summed up by the modern pick-and-roll and pick-and-pop offense. It’s fluid and improvisational. It demands communication, trust, and an inherent sense of understanding between teammates. And it’s full of potential. Starting with a simple pick, you’re just as likely to end up with a deep three or a pull-up jumper as you are to finish above the rim or earn a trip to the free-throw line.

Like basketball itself, it’s simple in theory and endlessly deep in practice.

That depth, and the stories it creates, are what I hope to explore in this recurring series: Picks, Pops, and Rolls. We’ll look at the Picks — the guys on top who are setting the high-water mark the rest of the league is chasing. We’ll celebrate the Pops — the risers and emerging stories you can’t help but get excited about. And we’ll sit with the adversity of the Rolls — those players who might need a momentum shift and are searching for a chance to change their narrative and end up somewhere unexpected.

So let’s talk about them. This time, we’re starting with the 2025 NBA sophomore class.

My Pick: Stephon Castle | Guard, San Antonio

The 4th pick in the draft, Stephon Castle, is the most complete sophomore in the class. He finished his rookie season averaging 14.7 points, 4.1 assists, and 3.7 rebounds, and took home the Rookie of the Year award for his efforts. To say he’s simply “continuing that success” this season is like saying Nemo was just a little lost in an oversized fish tank. Castle is up to about 17.3 points, 7.5 assists, and 5.8 rebounds per outing, and he’s the only member of his class with a triple-double on his résumé this season.

His playmaking leap is what really pops. At 7.5 assists per game, he finds himself in the same neighborhood that guys like Trae Young, LaMelo Ball, Tyrese Haliburton, and Cade Cunningham lived in during their sophomore campaigns - the kind of neighbors that usually tout “future franchise cornerstone” jobs more than “nice young guard” ones.

He’s risen to the top not just of his draft class, but of an exceptionally talented Spurs backcourt. It’s a group that now includes De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell, and 2025 No. 2 overall pick Dylan Harper. Despite a team with seemingly endless perimeter talent, Castle has already carved out a lead ball-handling role as the clear number 2 guard in San Antonio.

So what’s next for the top guy of the 2024 class? The only real blemish on an otherwise All-Star-caliber profile is his shooting. Despite a respectable 49.7% from the field, his overall efficiency still leaves plenty of room for growth compared to the rest of his game. From the free-throw line, he’s shooting a concerning 69.4%, and from deep, it only gets more troubling at 24% on nearly four attempts a night. In some cases, it’s even worse, including a 0-6 outing against the Pelicans. Over his 8 games in November, he took 29 attempts from behind the arc. He made 5.

All of that said, Stephon Castle is still the clear Pick of the sophomore class through the first quarter of the season. If he can find a reliable three-ball and some consistency at the stripe, it’s only a matter of time before the main question is whether his ceiling is All-Star, All-NBA, or possibly something even more valuable.

My Pops - The bigs. Alex Sarr | Center, Washington & Zach Edey | Center, Memphis

I’ll get this out of the way: I love Alex Sarr and Zach Edey. I’m a believer that the NBA touts some of the most physically gifted athletes in the world, and even as they become more common, there are still few greater physical gifts than being seven feet tall. Enter 7'0" Alex Sarr and 7'3" Zach Edey.

In terms of their Pop, it jumps off the stat sheet. Sarr has begun to separate himself as an offensive powerhouse. He leads the sophomore class in scoring at 19.1 points per game on 50% from the floor and just under 35% from deep. Those are impressive numbers that speak for themselves, but they speak even louder when you look at who he’s doing it against. He dropped 31 on the 76ers and Joel Embiid, then followed it up a week later in Boston, torching the Celtics for another 31 on 12-of-20 shooting, including 4-of-5 from beyond the arc.

Zach Edey, on the other hand, is a rebounding machine. He’s the clear rebound leader among sophomores, sixth in the entire league, and may very well be one of the most prolific glass-cleaners on earth. In his past four games (November 26th to December 2nd), he’s pulled down - I kid you not - 66 boards. Sixty. Six. That’s over 10 more than Ivica Zubac, the second leading rebounder in that span, and 20 more than Nikola Jokić, who was third. When I call him a bona fide, well-oiled, beep-boop-board-getting machine, I mean it.

Defensively, both have found homes near the top of the league in stocks (a combination of steals and blocks), separated by less than one stock a game (Edey at 2.89, Sarr at 2.81). Take it a step further, and Edey currently owns the best defensive ratings in the NBA of those with at least 5 games and averaging more than 10 minutes played.

What I love most, though, is that these two embody the Pop and the Roll of modern bigs. Alex Sarr is the new wave floor-stretcher - a mobile 7-footer who can step outside and thrive in space. Zach Edey is the physically dominant mountain in the paint - a rebound and putback immovable object. Even in their frames, they are an imposing old-school big and a hyper-skilled slippery point forward.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no beef between these two giants. And frankly, I’m not entirely sure the world could handle two warring titans like these if there was! What I do hope, though, is that we are at the beginning of what might become a long and storied rivalry. A collision of old vs. new, stretch-the-floor vs. stuff-the-paint, pick-and-roll vs. pick-and-pop.

Mark your calendars. Memphis and Washington play on December 20th and 28th. The series so far has Edey up 1-0, but with any luck, this is just the next chapter in a story we’ll be watching for years to come.

My Roll - Jared McCain | Guard, Philadelphia

This is the part that pains me most to write. But if Picks, Pops, and Rolls is genuinely about the full spectrum of stories around the league, there is certainly a name that comes to mind when we talk about sophomore season adversity. Jared McCain. From 15th overall pick to rookie phenom and front-runner for Rookie of the Year, to having his debut season cut short, McCain feels like a player who became the victim of his own early greatness more than anything else.

It’s not hard to see why expectations for McCain have been sky-high. He was an immediate sensation, arguably opening the Rookie of the Year conversations and landing tied for 7th in voting, and along with being the rookie scoring leader, received Rising Star recognition despite playing only 23 games. The main story of his success, though, was efficiency. McCain flirted with the most hallowed ground in shooting, the 50/40/90 club. His actual line settled just shy at 46% from the field, slightly north of 38% from three, and around 87% at the line. For a rookie guard on a team that was at best chaotic and at worst in free-fall, that is ridiculous efficiency.

All of that is the reason this season feels so tough. After 11 games back, he’s notching only 7.5 points per night. Understandably, McCain is still working back from his meniscus tear and a thumb injury this offseason, but even zooming out to compare his per-36 numbers, the fall is hard to ignore. Most glaring is his shooting. What made him so exceptional in his freshman campaign has become the clear pain point in the sequel, slumping from 46% from the field to 38%.

Circumstances haven’t gotten kinder for him either, as the 76ers have only deepened their backcourt. Tyrese Maxey appears to have made the full leap into superstardom, and rookie VJ Edgecombe just delivered one of the most electric debuts in recent memory with a 34-point explosion. While not insurmountable, he’s got a steep climb to claw back minutes from Maxey and Edgecombe.

All of this leads me to ask "what if?" What if he’d logged another 40 or 50 games of NBA reps last season? What if he’d been able to keep carving out that sensational role on a franchise desperate for new energy? What if the elite shooting that defined his rookie stretch had been allowed to mature without interruption? Could he have been the score-first, high-octane guard counterpart to Stephon Castle’s well-rounded Swiss-Army knife? Could we have gotten a backcourt rivalry to match the big-man duel between Sarr and Edey?

At least for now, those questions are what land McCain here. He’s a player in need of a momentum shift, stuck in a chapter that doesn’t match the opening pages of his story. However, despite all of this, I’m not out on Jared McCain. Far from it, in fact. If anything, this is the kind of detour that can make the eventual comeback all the more satisfying. But at least for the time being, his journey is a reminder that success isn’t always linear, and that in this beautiful game, some of its greatest stories will take us to some very unexpected places.

Originally written Dec 5, 2025