Tennessee shooting guard Chaz Lanier generated some buzz during his time at the NBA Combine which has done nothing but help his draft stock. The sharpshooter out of Nashville backed up his big shooting numbers in Chicago by ranking inside of the top five in all the three-point shooting drills.
Maybe a little more surprising was his athletic testing, which turned some heads. Here was Jeff Borzello at ESPN talking about his NBA Combine performance.
We knew Lanier would look like one of the best shooters entering the combine, and that carried over Tuesday. He has been one of the premier perimeter shotmakers in college basketball over the past two seasons, making 44% of his 3s in 2023-24 at North Florida and 39.5% last season at Tennessee.
He finished in the top five in all three 3-point shooting drills, and his touch and agility also caught the eyes of scouts. He had the fifth-fastest time in the pro lane agility drill, the third-highest no-step vertical leap and the fourth-highest max vertical leap
As a result, Lanier seems solidly in the top 60 at this point and should hear his name called next month.
At ESPN, Jonathan Givony has Lanier landing at No. 40 overall with the Washington Wizards.
At NBA.com, Jonathan Wasserman has Lanier going 38th overall to the San Antonio Spurs.
Sports Illustrated has Lanier landing at No. 42 to the Sacramento Kings.
Lanier didn’t exactly fill the precise role of Dalton Knecht, but that was always going to be difficult to replicate. Lanier was able to be a premier shooter for Tennessee, hitting over 39 percent of his attempts from long range. The 6-4 guard bet on himself to come to the SEC last season and he delivered by scoring 18 points per game.
His story is pretty wild coming from North Florida, where he spent three seasons hardly even seeing the floor. His fourth season with the program saw him turn into an elite scorer, going from not even playing to scoring 19.7 points per game. He parlayed that into offers from Tennessee, Kentucky and BYU and now is a very likely draft pick next month.
The NBA Draft is set for June 25th and June 26th on ABC and ESPN.
