How does the NBA draft work? The NBA draft is an annual event dating back to 1947 in which the NBA teams select players to join their rosters. It is one of the most important events in the year since the teams often decide their future based on the decisions they make on that particular night.

On a single draft night, the decisions made on that night can change the course of an entire organization for years to come. With so much that can happen and so much at stake, let’s have a look at how the entire process works.

How does the NBA draft work?

The draft usually takes place near the end of July, during the NBA offseason. Since 1989, the draft has consisted of two rounds which is much shorter than the drafts of the other major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, all of which run at least seven rounds.

Sixty players are selected in each draft. In order for a player to be selected on the NBA draft, he needs to be eligible. College players who have finished their four-year college are automatically eligible for selection, while the underclassmen have to declare their eligibility and give up their remaining college eligibility. In other words, if a college player decides to declare for the NBA draft before he finishes school and goes undrafted he can no longer go back and play college basketball.

International players who are at least 22 years old are automatically eligible for selection, while the players younger than 22 have to declare their eligibility. Players who are not automatically eligible but have declared their eligibility are often called “early-entrants”.

No player may sign with the NBA until he has been eligible for at least one draft.

In the past, high school players were also eligible to be selected. However, starting in the 2006 draft, high school players were not eligible to enter the draft directly after graduating from high school. The rules now state that high school players will gain eligibility for draft selection one year after their high school graduation, and they also must be at least 19 years old as of the end of the calendar year of the draft.

How does the NBA Draft Lottery work?

The order by which the teams will select players on the NBA draft is determined by the Draft lottery and the team record from the previous season.

Since 2019, the first four picks have been determined by the NBA Draft Lottery.

The teams who did not make the playoffs in the past year participate in the Draft Lottery process. In the lottery system, the league uses “a lottery-style ping-pong ball machine with 14 balls numbered 1–14, and 1,000 four-digit combinations are assigned to the 14 lottery teams. Starting in 2019, the three worst teams receive 140 combinations each, the fourth-worst 125, and so on.

Those three teams have an equal chance of winning the top overall pick. After the first four picks are determined, the rest of the teams are ordered in reverse order based on their record in the previous season.

History of the NBA Draft

The 1947 BAA draft was the inaugural draft of the Basketball Association of America which later became the NBA. The fledgling BAA held a joint draft with the established National Basketball League (NBL).

The draft was held on July 1, 1947, in Detroit, Michigan. The nine BAA teams along with the Baltimore Bullets who joined from the American Basketball League took turns selecting amateur U.S. college basketball players.

In the first round of the draft, the teams selected in reverse order of their win-loss record in the previous season, while the Bullets were assigned the tenth pick, the last pick of the first round.

The first pick of the inaugural NBA, or then BAA draft, was Clifton McNeely selected by the Pittsburgh Ironmen. McNeely was a 5-10 point guard coming from the Texas Wesleyan University. A fun fact is that McNeely never played in the BAA, instead, he opted for a high school coaching career in Texas.

In the early years of the draft, teams would select players until they ran out of prospects. The 1960 and 1968 drafts went 21 rounds. By 1974, it had stabilized to 10 rounds (except 1977, when the rounds were eight), which held up until 1985, when the draft was shortened to seven rounds. By agreement with the National Basketball Players Association, the drafts from 1989 onward have been limited to two rounds, which give undrafted players the chance to try out for any team.

On draft night, a total of 60 prospects will be selected to join an NBA franchise (30 in the first round, 30 in the second round). We have established the traditional draft order, which is often subject to drastic change as front offices work towards constructing their rosters. Various trades involve picks attached, meaning on draft night you could well be selected in the lottery even though you were a playoff team the previous year. Anything is possible due to trades, salary cap, and overall free agency status of top NBA players, which is why draft night is one of the most interesting anticipated events after the NBA season.

As for the proceedings, franchisees are given five minutes on the clock to make their selections or manufacture a deal with someone who wants it. History has shown us this is commonplace, as franchises chose to move up or down the draft depending on their situation and roster goals. The second rounds teams have two minutes on the clock to make their decisions, and the draft is completed as the last franchise makes the 60^th pick to conclude the second round.