Draft Night Flashback: Danny Wolf Breaks Down his Emotional Night

Many believed the Brooklyn Nets would trade out of their 27th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft after taking four rookies in the first round. The front office must've seen something they liked in a playmaking, floor spacing forward in Michigan's Danny Wolf, taking him with their last pick of the night.

The 21-year-old went from an unranked high school recruit to the Yale Bulldogs, to the Michigan Wolverines, where he was the team's second leading scorer and helped them to a Sweet 16 run. Few players and families were more emotional than the Wolf family when his name was called.

Wolf joined NBA TV's Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine to break down what made his draft night so surreal.

The image that many remember from that night is Wolf and his brother in tears after he was selected. It was a combination of emotions that led to their raw emotional outburst.

"You wait your entire life for that moment," Wolf said. "Very few people get to experience it, so I'm super lucky, but it's a long day."

Wolf added that he only got around 20 minutes of sleep the night before because his mind was racing, trying to account for every possible scenario. All of the work he put in before the draft was what got him there, but nothing about his draft destination was under his control.

Draft night is one of those life flashing moments if you're waiting to hear your name called, especially if you are a player like Wolf who worked from the ground up.

"Obviously, there were some landing spots that we thought were going to happen," Wolf said. "The way the balls fell and some guys going in unexpected places, I think I was sitting on the floor for probably about three and a half hours."

In ESPN analysts Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo's final 2025 mock draft, they had Wolf going No. 18 and other mock drafts had him as high as the lottery.

His emotions were running high as each pick went by, and he had yet to be drafted. When the time finally came where Brooklyn selected Wolf, he and his family's teary-eyed faces were filled with joy, not sadness.

Minutes didn't come easily once the Nets' regular season began, but the moment he received a real opportunity, he seized it. Wolf played 30 minutes against the Milwaukee Bucks Nov. 29, where he scored 22 points on 50% shooting, along with four rebounds and four assists.

Draft night didn't go the way Wolf might've expected, but his early development shows that draft position doesn't determine an NBA player's future.