KNOXVILLE, Tenn. –Chaz Lanier of the University of Tennessee men’s basketball team went No. 37 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft, selected in the second round Thursday night by the Detroit Pistons at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The seventh pick of the second round, on the second day of the draft, Lanier was the seventh player picked from an SEC school.
The 56th player ever drafted out of Tennessee, Lanier is the second Volunteer chosen by Detroit. He follows the program’s all-time leading scorer, Allan Houston, who went No. 11 in 1993.
Lanier is the 45th future NBA player whom Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes has coached in his 38-year tenure at the helm of a program, including the 34th draftee. Counting his eight years as an assistant, Barnes has now coached 52 NBA players, including 40 draftees.
Barnes has now produced 11 NBA players during his Tennessee tenure, nine of whom were drafted, all in the last seven years (2019-25).
This is the fifth consecutive year a Tennessee player has been selected in the NBA Draft. The Volunteers, with the draft not yet complete, are one of just five teams with at least a five-year streak, alongside Baylor, Connecticut, Duke and Kentucky. One other, Gonzaga, can still join that group with 18 picks left.
Prior to this stretch, Tennessee’s longest NBA Draft streak in the two-round era (since 1989) was two years, as it had two selections in 2014 and one in 2015. Prior to that, the Volunteers had a nine-year streak from 1963-71 and a seven-year count from 1979-85.
In addition, this is the sixth time in the last seven years at least one Tennessee player has been picked. The Volunteers, with much of the second round remaining, are among only four teams to have a player chosen in at least six of the last seven NBA Drafts, joining Arkansas, Duke and Kentucky. Both Gonzaga and USC could still join that list with 18 picks to go.
Lanier is coming off a 2024-25 campaign, his lone one at Tennessee, in which he won the Jerry West Award as the nation’s premier shooting guard after averaging 18.0 points, 3.9 rebounds and 1.1 assists per game. He shot 39.5 percent from long range and set a Tennessee single-season record with 123 made 3-pointers, tied for fourth-most in Division I and good for sixth-best in SEC history.
One of just 10 Wooden Award All-Americans, Lanier was selected as an NABC Third Team All-America and a The Sporting News Third Team All-American. He scored in double figures 36 times, the only player in the country to do so. He had 17-plus points in 25 of his 38 outings as a Volunteer, with 20-plus in 15 and 25-plus in six.
The 6-foot-5, 207-pounder was tabbed a First Team All-SEC pick by the AP and was named the SEC Newcomer of the Year by the league’s coaches. Lanier 684 points ranked No. 15 in Division I and ninth on Tennessee’s single-season leaderboard.
Before coming to Tennessee as a fifth-year transfer, Lanier spent four years at North Florida. The Nashville, Tenn., native averaged 19.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists per game as a senior in 2023-24, shooting 44.0 percent from 3-point range to rank fifth nationally. He earned First Team All-Atlantic Sun and NABC First Team All-District 3 accolades in his final year with the Ospreys.
Overall, Lanier totaled 1,613 points over 142 games in his five-year career, good for an average of 11.4 per contest. He shot 276-of-867 from 3-point range to finish with a 40.2 percent clip from beyond the arc.
Lanier is the second straight fifth-year guard transfer to join the Volunteers, win a Naismith “Starting Five” award, collect All-America honors and hear his name called in the NBA Draft, following Dalton Knecht in 2023-24.
To keep up with the University of Tennessee men’s basketball team on social media, follow @Vol_Hoops on Instagram and X/Twitter, as well as /tennesseebasketball on Facebook.
