Tonight you'll see the NBA dreams of young men turn to reality. But the draft process is far more complex than meets the eye, so let's examine the three main components to how it works: the draft lottery, the training process and draft day.
The Lottery
At the conclusion of every regular season, a total of 16 teams make the playoffs, leaving the remaining 14 to plan their vacations. The silver lining of not making the playoffs for these 14 teams is that they are given the opportunity to earn one of the top picks in the following draft, via the lottery.
The lottery picks are decided when 14 Ping-Pong balls, numbered 1-14, are mixed in a glass jar. There are a total of 1,001 four-ball combinations that can be had from the 14 options in the jar, and the sequential combination of 11-12-13-14 is not used. This leaves 1,000 possible combinations, which are proportionally given out to the 14 teams based on their regular-season records. Following the determination of the first three picks, the remaining 11 picks are given to the teams based on their records, effectively meaning that if the worst team's Ping-Pong ball combinations are not drawn, it is still guaranteed a top-4 pick in that draft.
This year the top four picks went to the Phoenix Suns, the Sacramento Kings, the Atlanta Hawks and the Memphis Grizzlies.
Training: Workouts and Pro Days
The NCAA basketball season comes to a conclusion with the March Madness tournament. Similar to NFL prospects, NBA hopefuls declare for the draft following their team's final game, and they immediately begin rigorously training for the draft. Two-month training costs often add up in excess of $20,000, which their agents end up incurring. While there is no rule that agents have to front these fees, that is what the market demands, and to play you have to pay. Players will train at various locations based on preference and agent relationships; for instance, Oklahoma's Trae Young trained at Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, California, and the prospective No. 1 overall pick Deandre Ayton trained at EXOS in Phoenix, Arizona.
During this time, players will speak to teams and participate in private workouts. The aforementioned Ayton made it very clear that he wanted to work out for one team and one team only, the Phoenix Suns, the franchise with the No. 1 overall spot in its back pocket. This is a strategic play by both Ayton and his agent, Bill Duffy, and while it may be a risky stance to take for most prospects, Ayton is too superior a physical specimen to pass up.
If there is great interest in a player from multiple teams, as there typically is for lottery picks, they will usually choose to hold a pro day at their training facility in front of multiple teams, scouts and front-office officials. Throughout team visits, front offices are very transparent with certain players whom they know they are or are not going to draft. The combination of those opinions and mock drafts gives pro prospects a good idea of whether they have a realistic chance that year in the draft.
Where these players differ from NFL prospects is that they have the opportunity to return to school if they have eligibility, so long as they do not hire an agent in the workout process. While it may be a great expense to a player to train and remain an amateur, having a second or third chance at NCAA basketball is a great safety net to assist developing players. This progressivism of the professional sports draft process is a step in the right direction for giving more options to our young student-athletes.
Draft Day
It is important to remember that there are a total of 450 active NBA players, and a total of 60 new players drafted annually. Just as first-round NFL draft picks have significantly larger contract values than seventh-rounders (based on signing bonuses), the same applies between the first- and second-round NBA draftees.
Like the NFL, NBA draft salaries are, for the most part, predetermined and based on a rookie scale, determined by the Collective Bargaining Agreement. First-round contracts run a total of four years, with the first two being guaranteed.
NBA agents are free to negotiate as little as 80% of the guaranteed value and a max of 120% of it. Based on this scale, the 2017 No. 1 draft pick was slated to make $5.855 million in his first year, and more in Year 2 before the third-year team option, which calls for the team to pay him 26.1% over his Year 2 salary. The 2017 top pick was Markelle Fultz, whose first-year contract is valued at $7.026M. This means that his agent, Raymond Brothers, negotiated 120% of the guaranteed value.
NBA signing bonuses are negligible if they are negotiated at all, as first-round contracts are fully guaranteed for the first two years . Until recently, second-round contracts were not guaranteed; because of this, the CBA was negotiated to require second-round contracts to receive the league minimum of $815,615, across the entire round. As of late, more and more second-round contracts are receiving guarantees. An NBC study recently analyzed the last six years of the NBA draft, which yielded fascinating results on second-round contracts. It showed that 65 of the 72 players chosen between Picks 31 and 45 in those drafts had some form of a guaranteed contract.
I believe the reason for this is because there is an inverse relationship between age and draft position. NBA teams at the top of the draft choose prospects with the intent of developing their young talent into franchise players within a couple of years. Very few enter the league as rookies and have immediate success the way LeBron James did in 2003. The top 10 picks from last year's draft class were all either freshmen or international players of college freshman age, and the same goes for tonight's draft. Second-round talent often consists of sophomores, juniors and seniors. These athletes have had more time to develop their skills on the basketball court and end up being much better pro players than they would have been coming out a year earlier. This creates a demand for them, but the additional year in school theoretically means one less year for that drafting team, and as such, they fall to the second round.
The NBA’s 2017 salary cap was set at $99 million, and the salary floor was at about $90 million, which means there is money to be spent. Very few teams fall below the salary floor, but those that do will often sign or trade for players to make up that difference right before the trade deadline. To circumvent this CBA loophole, the NBA/NBPA amended the rule to where they will only recognize salaries that have not been paid. For instance, if a player were signed to cover a $10 million gap and 50% of the contract had been paid out in that season, the new team would be able to count only that second $5 million toward the spending floor.
Of all the professional sports, now is the time to be an NBA player. There are record-breaking contracts being signed seemingly daily, and agents are not as concerned with second-round draft picks making their fair share as they once were. The process is lengthy and arduous for both the prospects and their agents, but there are fruitful rewards on the other end of the journey if they are able to properly work their way through the system.
- Jaydeep Joshi contributed research to this article