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The NBA Draft is an annual process held to decide which recently eligible players join
which teams. Unlike many US sports, the NBA draft is only two rounds long; the NFL and
NHL, for example, both have seven round drafts.
When a team selects, or drafts, a player, they are then exclusively able to sign that
player to a contract; that does not prevent that player being traded immediately, though,
in exchange for another or for further draft picks. Famously, for example, Andrew Wiggins
was drafted first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2014 and immediately traded to
the Minnesota Timberwolves in a three-team deal that took Kevin Love to Cleveland to
team up with LeBron James and ultimately win the championship in 2016.
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The point of a draft is to even the playing field between teams, ensuring that deep pockets
do not always win over the best talent. This is further encouraged by the NBA’s draft
lottery.
The draft lottery is a means by which the 14 teams who do not make the play-offs are
assigned an order for the first four picks of the first round – it was introduced in
1985 to see off accusations that some teams were deliberately bombing in order to secure
early picks in the next draft and begin a roster overhaul. 2019 is the first year that
the lottery will assign four picks; prior to this year, only the first three picks were
assigned by lottery.
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The lottery happens in the third or fourth week of May, just before the draft combine.
The lottery uses a machine containing ping-pong balls that are numbered one to 14 and 1000
four-digit combinations are assigned to each team, with teams getting a number of combinations
depending on where they finished in the preceding season.
The lottery has changed for 2019 – prior to 2019, the teams were weighted according
to their performance with the worst team in the season most likely to get first pick by
virtue of receiving more combinations than the other sides, though of course this wasn’t
guaranteed.
From 2019, the three worst teams will each get the same weighting, 140 combinations each,
with the next worst side getting 125 and so on. This will then determine the first four
picks, instead of three, and then the rest of the order will be decided based on where
the teams finished last season, with worse teams picking earlier as before.
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After the top 14 picks are taken by the lottery-eligible teams, the remaining first round picks, from
15-30, and the remaining picks, from 31-60, will be determined by the reverse order of
the preceding season’s finishing places. This guarantees that every NBA team will get
one first round and one second round pick.
The combine, which comes after the lottery, is a series of athletic and interview-based
tests for invited college athletes, and any others who are eligible for the draft. It’s
a sporting, physical, and psychological assessment by which teams can further hone their thinking
around who to draft and where. The combine is invitation-only, and the list is decided
by the NBA teams themselves.
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Any player who is 19 years old or over, or has completed one year of college, is eligible
for the NBA draft. In addition, players are automatically eligible if any of the following
apply: they have completed four years of college eligibility, are four years removed from high
school graduation, or have played professional basketball anywhere in the world under contract,
but that contract has expired.
In addition, if a player is deemed ‘international’, that is they’ve lived outside the U.S. for
three years before the draft, have never attended college or university in the U.S., and were
not at high school in the U.S., are eligible if they are at least 22 years old during the
draft’s calendar year, or have played under contract in the U.S but outside the NBA. The
only two international players without any competitive experience in the U.S. to be drafted
first overall were Yao Ming to the Houston Rockets in 2002, and Andrea Bargnani to the
Toronto Raptors in 2006.
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This eligibility has seen various changes over the years and the criteria are determined
by collective bargaining agreements between the NBA (the commissioner and the 30 teams),
and the players themselves. For example, prior to 2006, players could be drafted directly
from high school.
Between the NBA’s first season, 1946/47, and 1994, though, only three players were
drafted straight from high school into the NBA: Reggie Harding by the Detroit Pistons
in 1962; Darryl Dawkins by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1975; and Bill Willoughby by the
Atlanta Hawks in 1977.
However, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, in 1995 and ’96 respectively, were both first
round draft picks straight from high school and this shifted the dynamic – while Harding,
Dawkins, and Willoughby’s careers petered out, Garnett and Bryant showed the possibility
that high school players really could make the jump without intervening time in college.
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After this, Kwame Brown (Washington Wizard, 2001), LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers,
2003), and Dwight Howard (Orlando Magic, 2004) weren’t just drafted straight from high
school, they were drafted first round, first pick.
While only three players were drafted straight from high school between 46/47 and ’94,
between ’95 and ’05, forty players made the jump; thirty of those were drafted in
the first round.
This changed in 2006, when a new collective bargaining agreement created the ‘One and
Done’ rule, ensuring that players either had to be 19 years old or have completed at
least one year of college basketball before being eligible for the draft. In addition,
even if a player is 19, they must be one year removed from high school education. This *may*
change in 2022, though, after a 2018 repot from the Commission on College Basketball.
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High draft picks do not guarantee success. While certain drafts, like 2003, which saw
LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony drafted, are very deep in terms of talent,
the 2000 draft was called “a horrible group of players” by Sports Illustrated. Some
first picks have gone on to enormous success, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille
O’Neal, and LeBron James, while others, like Anthony Bennett, Greg Ogden, and the
aforementioned Bargnani, failed to deliver.
Drafts are ultimately a mix of luck, scouting and assessment, and guesswork. Teams will
try to work out where players they want may be drafted based on what other teams are looking
for, or who other teams may wish to secure in order to trade. It’s a complex, compelling
process that can be almost as interesting as the season itself.
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