NBA Draft: Where Can Nolan Traore Improve His Game?

The French point guard prospect is a projected top-10 pick for the 2025 NBA Draft and impressed at ANGT in May and Eurobasket U18. But where are some areas he should look to improve in the upcoming season for Saint Quentin?

Nolan Traore /

The 2025 NBA Draft class is loaded, and sitting near the top of almost every mock draft is French point guard Nolan Traore. Standing at 6-foot-5 in shoes with a 6-foot-8 wingspan, Traore’s physique is elite for his age, position, and skillset. Traore is also strong, has a good center of gravity, and plays the game with an uncanny control of his own speed for someone his age. At the U18 level, his combination of size, skills, and ability to go from 0 to 100 and then back to 0 in what feels like two seconds makes him an impossible one-on-one cover. 

Posting averages of 14 points, 9.3 assists, 3.6 rebounds, and 2 steals on 49/43/62 splits, Traore showed once again that he’s a clear level above his peers, and is more than ready for consistent playing time and a notable role at the professional level. It appears that’s the environment he’ll be in for the upcoming season with French club Saint Quentin. 

Traore will look to pick up where he left off with Saint Quentin last season. After making his professional debut at the end of March he spent the next month finding his footing at the professional level. At the end of April, he had his first big game, dropping 18 points and 8 assists on EuroLeague club ASVEL in a two-point win and carried that performance into quality play against ASVEL in the French LNB quarterfinals where he helped Saint Quentin fight hard but they ultimately came up short. 

Traore was able to convert to a high-level contributor at the professional level because of his combination of size and skill. Even at 18, he’s a plus athlete compared to plenty of his guard counterparts in France. The true difference maker for Traore though is his pick-and-roll savviness. He excels at the two-man game, particularly as a scorer - gliding to his spots at the rim and in the mid-range in particular while also possessing the ability to read the defense and create for others. As a passer, his favorites are the lob either for a dunk or to get the ball up high for his big man to catch and finish over a smaller guard who has switched onto him. Traore is a proficient spot-up shooter as well, making him a high-level offensive contributor for Saint Quentin. 

But what are some of the things holding Traore back? Traore is essentially locked into spots four or five in most mock drafts as things stand, and while Cooper Flagg seems to be a lock for number one Traore will surely have a goal of becoming the third straight French prospect to get selected with the first pick. 

Where Can Nolan Traore Improve His Game?

Left-Hand Frequency and Strength:

The first cause for concern when watching Traore is how little he uses his left hand. It’s hard to say whether it’s weak or not yet because he simply doesn’t take too many reps with it and that is a larger cause for concern overall. Traore still, like many young players, pursues strong side drives, strong hand finishes, and strong hand passes. At this age - and especially in youth competition - there is little reason for Traore to use his left hand. Opponents can’t stop his right, so why would he go left?  

Playing at the professional level will pose new challenges for Traore. The French league will have three EuroLeague clubs this season, AS Monaco, LDLC ASVEL, and Paris Basketball who qualified by winning last season’s EuroCup competition. These teams will be equipped to put tougher defenders on Traore and have the ability to execute schemes that keep him out of his comfort zone. The days of simply powering by inferior opponents are behind him, and if he wants to be a truly elite offensive guard and overall scoring threat he’ll need to diversify his bag, and that starts with more confidence in your off-hand. 

We want to see Traore using his left hand when it makes sense, above all else. He doesn’t need to be converting with the same efficiency yet, he is only a prospect after all. But finishing with his left hand to avoid blocks, passing with his left out of the pick-and-roll, and overall greater comfort putting the ball on the floor with his left are all things that would behoove him to do should he desire to make a play for the number one selection this offseason. 

Strength with the Basketball and Valuing Possessions:

When you watch youth basketball, one of the biggest differences you see compared to the pros is the number of turnovers and the quality of turnovers as well. Nearly every youth game has a handful of turnovers caused by general carelessness that you seldom see among the pros. The principal perpetrators of this? Guards, of course, and Traore is no exception. 

At the U18 Eurobasket Traore posted a 9.3-to-4.7 assist-to-turnover ratio. Coming in at nearly 2-to-1 on that volume of assists is impressive, even for Traore, but the type of turnovers he was committing still raised some eyebrows. Traore struggles to protect the basketball, often dribbling into crowds with the ball out in the open, begging defenders to take it from him, and they do. This tends to happen after Traore beats opponents with a few direct drives. The help gets better and he doesn’t make the adjustment and provide proper care for the basketball. Sometimes, the ball just gets muscled away from him 

Traore’s pass quality isn’t where it needs to be for an aspiring point guard. He’ll throw passes into traffic, float them carelessly, and force the issue in spots where it simply isn’t necessary. This is an expected weakness for a guard with only a few repetitions at the professional level but as he is thrust into full-time offensive creator duties next season he’ll need to show a greater level of seriousness with the ball in his hands. This doesn’t need to be perfect come season's end, but it does need to be better. 

Doing Anything, Literally Anything Off-Ball:

Traore is a ball-dominant, pick-and-roll heavy guard. He’s not expected to become a movement shooter like Steph Curry or some deft off-ball cutter who regularly makes pressure defenses pay for their aggressiveness. But he does need to do more off-ball than he currently does, which at times is truly nothing.  

For most of his off-ball reps at Eurobasket, Traore was a piece of furniture, a lamp. Off in the corner, drawing attention, but completely stationary. Face cuts, back cuts, drifting, and lifting were all cast aside. He stayed ready for a spot-up three-pointer or surged to get the ball when he saw the offense stagnating so he could run a pick-and-roll. Here’s one example of how stationary he can be:

To be clear, the point being made here is not that Traore should be looking to become an elite off-ball scorer. That doesn’t fit his profile. The point is that he should be more than a lamp when the ball isn’t in his hands. Cut, set the occasional screen, and overall find ways to contribute offensively even when the ball isn’t in your hands. At the NBA level, nearly every superstar has had to figure this out. Aggressive defensive schemes can shun you out of the game for stretches. Knowing how to have an off-ball impact, either by scoring or making moves that put defenses in disadvantageous positions can cause them to reconsider or stubbornly stick to their guns, and usually result in a loss. But an acceptance of defeat and apathy towards alternative options will drag your team down. It doesn’t need to be a lot of off-ball movement, but it needs to be greater than zero.

Conclusion:

Traore is deserving of his top-10 spot in mock drafts and it’s hard to see him falling lower than that. He projects to have a very impressive season with a high usage rate and a lot of pick-and-roll repetitions for Saint Quentin, that will likely be enough to stay where he is. But if he wants to move into the top-3 and maybe even try to play for first overall he’s got to improve some nuanced areas of his game. It’s how he could move from a great prospect to a potentially all-time great prospect. This season, we will find out how much that matters to him. 

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