Lost in the shuffle of a tax-ducking fire sale at the 11th hour was the acquisition of a new two-way player in rookie John Tonje.
Part of the trade that sent Chris Boucher and a 2027 second round pick to Utah, Tonje became the third player from the 2025 draft class to take one of Boston’s three two-way spots, joining Max Shulga and the now converted Amari Williams.
The 24-year-old Tonje, taken 53rd overall after a lengthy college career featuring stops at Colorado State, Missouri and Wisconsin, has been off to a good start in his pro career, averaging 18 points and 4 rebounds on 47/38/93 shooting splits in 32 G-League games with the Salt Lake City Stars.
There is a simple pleasure in diving into a newcomer’s game and his unfamiliar pro background, and today we’re going to take a quick look at the newest member of the Boston (and Maine) Celtics through a flash of his college and G-League highlights as well as one full-game breakdown with Salt Lake.
I won’t harp on the specifics of Tonje’s college tape, but considering these Wisconsin highlights were just a year ago, they do give us a nice launchpad into the type of player he is when he’s a primary option.
Tonje and backcourt mate John Blackwell were the only two Badgers to average double figures in shot attempts, and in his 12 shots per game, Tonje was an efficient 20-point scorer. He knocked down 46% of his shots, 39% of his threes, and got to the line seven times a night, knocking down his free throws at a cool 91% rate.
A second-team All-American, he closed his college career out with an impressive run of shotmaking performances, including a Big Ten Tournament win over UCLA where he hit all six of his threes and missed just one of his 10 shots for 26 points. In his final college game, he battled with Egor Demin and BYU in one of the NCAA Tournament’s most intense finishes, nearly carrying his team to the Sweet 16 with a 37-point outburst in a 91-89 loss.
Those 37 points marked a March Madness record in Badgers history by the way.
You’ll see plenty of it in his highlight reels, but Tonje’s first instinct is to catch and attack. He’s a natural off-ball wing that’s most comfortable finishing plays rather than setting them up, and at 6’4” and 218 pounds, Tonje presents a powerful package that he utilizes in his slashing rim attacks.
But more than just a bully, he was an excellent movement shooter and pindown aficionado. Tonje showcased serious range from beyond the arc and a constant motor that always flashed whether the ball was coming his way or not. His ability to find space as a cutter also shouldn’t go unnoticed.
Where his stock fell in the draft process was in his defensive deficiencies. While a strong player and a high-effort defender, he lacks top-end burst and lateral quickness, struggling to contain quicker assignments. His defensive instincts did not generate turnovers at a promising rate either, and even with a 6’9” wingspan, he wasn’t much of a shot-altering threat when the ball did get past him in the paint.
To be an NBA player, his ability to score the ball is his greatest calling card. So that’ll be the focus of this next section.
Any time your favorite team acquires someone new, the first place you generally want to look is their highlight packages. You want to see the absolute best they have to offer before digging a little deeper.
Lucky for us, Tonje has had quite a few scoring outbursts at the G-League level. Unlucky for us is the fact that the G-League makes it sort of difficult to find a lot of these player highlights.
To save some time, I present to you a quick highlight package consisting of his shotmaking from his three best scoring performances, which include a 34-point game on 71% shooting against the Rip City Remix, a 30-point game against the South Bay Lakers and a 29-point finish against the Valley Suns.
In our brief introduction to Tonje’s best, we see how his physicality can still be his best weapon. He drives through defenders, creates space by initiating contact, and his touch is clean when he has space to fire off jumpers. Off the catch he doesn’t have a necessarily quick release, but the shot is pure, and it’s no surprise that he’s a 38% 3-point shooter on six attempts per game.
Something worth noting is how Tonje’s shot diet has been streamlined into shots at the rim and above the break. In his last year of college, 20% of Tonje’s shots came in the mid-range, where he was a modest 40% shooter, but he’s dedicated his volume to the shots the NBA has gravitated to in the analytics-driven era. In the G-League, he’s attempted just 22 shots in the mid-range, and he hit on 11 of them.
Also worth noting is that Tonje has been a developing rebounding wing at this level. He’s had seven games with at least five rebounds or more and has achieved double-doubles on a pair of 27-point performances.
The One-Game Sample: What does it tell us?
To cap off this Tonje crash course, we’re stepping away from the highlights and into a full-game sample. Finding an entire full-game replay of a G-League contest is surprisingly difficult, so we’re watching the last nationally broadcast Salt Lake City game on Jan. 28 when they took on the South Bay Lakers.
In 33 minutes, Tonje didn’t have a particularly good shooting night, finishing 3-of-13 from the field and 5-of-5 from the line for 14 points to go with six rebounds and just one turnover. What does the eye test say though?
The most noticeable thing from this one game is that the defensive concerns from college still show up quite a bit, both in his off-ball work and in his isolation defense against quicker guards. In this case, a matchup with former first-round pick Kobe Bufkin proved difficult for Tonje, and Bufkin took advantage of their matchup twice in a close fourth quarter.
In his off-ball defense, Tonje often found himself just a beat too late in his reactions. Early in the game, he was caught ball-watching and lost his man, who nailed an open trey. Early in the third quarter after fighting around a screen, he got beat again in the process of a stunt-and-recover near the nail. And in one extended sequence that features a good shot contest, he ultimately plays a part in an easy lob when he half-heartedly tags the rim-running big with his teammate forced to play the ball after a side pick-and-roll.
On offense, tunnel vision on his drives ended in a few blocked shots and a first half without a field goal, but he was unrelenting in the second half, having more success in his drives into the paint.
He had three particularly impressive second-half finishes in traffic, starting with an isolation drive where he created space past the 3-point line with a jab step before driving through the body of his defender for a mid-range bucket. Later in the third, it’s another tunnel vision drive into three bodies, yet he takes the bump and finishes through contact for an and-one.
And in his most impressive play, he took another authoritative drive off an elbow handoff and got past the last line of defense with a tough reverse layup (you might recognize that last line of defense as former Celtics draft pick Anton Watson), something we’ve seen quite a bit of in his highlights.
It was an overall mixed bag, but a game that backs up a lot of the info we have about Tonje from his college and overall G-League clips. His defense is a major work in progress, but his confidence is unwavering when it comes to the offensive end. The man can score the rock, now we wait to see how it translates to his time in Maine, and possibly, Boston.
What are your early impressions of John Tonje? What are your projections of his NBA future?
Let us know in the comments below.
