NBA Draft and Draft Lottery Explained: How Do They Work?

What Is NBA Draft?

Anyone wants to take advantage of every possibility when playing games. In this context, for example, one can look at the list of best casino bonuses 2022 to see the most valuable promotions one can find on a legit casino website. A similar system applies to basketball: NBA teams look at a roster of new players to join the league and select the ones they think are the best. However, this must be done in a certain order, otherwise, all teams may focus on the same player. The NBA draft establishes a set of rules for how new players are selected.

“The NBA draft is also part of the betting industry,” says Tony Sloterman, Product Owner of Casino Bonuses Finder company. “It is possible to find bets that are just as popular as NBA games and have very high odds on what the draft results will be.”

NBA Draft Explained

Each year, a list of players deemed talented enough to play in the NBA is drawn up. The names to be included in this list are mostly determined by sports agents or representatives of NBA teams. For example, an NBA representative may attend college games of a specific player who is considered promising and evaluate that player. The result is a list of new players who have never played in the NBA before but are considered very talented: this list is simply called the “draft”.

NBA teams can make offers to players on this list to join their teams. However, as we mentioned above, this job is subject to certain rules to avoid chaos: a “lottery” is organized to determine how teams can pick.

NBA Draft Lottery

This is called the “NBA Draft Lottery” and it’s actually pretty simple. The 14 teams that did not qualify for the previous year’s playoffs are included in a lottery to determine the pick order. The team selected first in this lottery wins the first pick. In other words, it has the right to make the first offer to a player on the draft list. The lottery simply determines the pick order of the teams. For example, in the 2022 NBA Draft Lottery, the top three teams were Orlando, Oklahoma, and Houston. This means that Orlando can make the first pick from the draft list, Oklahoma the second pick, and Houston the third pick.

The NBA draft consists of two rounds, with 30 picks in each round (60 picks in total). According to the order determined by the lottery result, each team has the right to make one pick per round. But sometimes teams do pass: this is due to “trade” deals made behind the scenes. For example, the second-placed team may make an offer to the first team to pass its first pick and this offer can even include money. In fact, this has happened many times in NBA history, and it is among the biggest criticisms of the NBA draft system.

Still, it’s an indisputable fact that this system has helped bring out the most important players in NBA history. To give some examples:

  • The San Antonio Spurs selected Tim Duncan from the 1997 draft and Duncan led his team to multiple NBA championships.
  • The Orlando Magic selected Shaquille O’Neal in 1992.
  • LeBron James was selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003.

The NBA draft and lottery systems play an important role in the emergence of basketball stars, but how effective they are will depend on how well that year’s draft is chosen: in some years, no name in the draft has managed to make a success story.