For the past month, we have known that the San Antonio Spurs were going to take Victor Wembanyama with the first overall pick in Thursday night’s NBA Draft. That was their reward for winning the lottery back in May, and the rest of the teams in the top-14 have spent the remaining time trying to game out who might be available when they’re picking and building out a board for every scenario.
What I suggest is the NBA embrace chaos and deliver a television spectacle unlike anything else in sports by holding the lottery at 7:30 p.m. ET on Draft night, still starting the Draft at 8 p.m. ET. This is an idea I tweeted out as I watched ESPN’s pre-Draft coverage talk about the same things we’d been talking about for a month and realized this could all be so much crazier, and thousands of people seem to agree with me.
the nba should hold the lottery 30 minutes before the draft
— Robby Kalland (@RKalland) June 22, 2023
Imagine the tension in the air if we’d gotten all the way to Draft night waiting to find out where Wembanyama was going, and then the fallout for teams like Portland, Detroit, and others who had to make more sudden pivots and shifts with what they wanted to do. It’d be sensational.
I also don’t think it would really change too much of the pre-Draft process for these teams, who already invite 60-plus players to their facilities for workouts. It would mean top guys would have to do more visits than they do currently, but otherwise, these teams are already putting together big boards and profiles on everyone, just in case they have opportunities to move up and down. Everyone is already planning on various outcomes and contingencies, what’s a few more added to the mix. Let’s see what front offices and scouting departments are really dialed in, and embrace some chaos to get the festivities going.
This year’s Draft featured a top-10 filled with teams that everyone knew wanted to move out, and the result was, like in 2021, a mostly stagnant start as teams struggled to find the deals they wanted. Maybe with less time to get paralysis by analysis, we’d free things up for some moves as we’ve seen that when teams are presented with a deadline, they tend to move quicker and a little looser — just look at the three-team deal from the other night where, with 90 minutes to salvage a Kristaps Porzingis trade, the Celtics made an even bigger deal by sending Marcus Smart to Memphis.
In a perfect world, we get all 30 GMs in the same room and have it be like NBA Wall Street, haggling with each other on the Draft floor to make deals and try to move up and down to land the player they wanted. Instead of having to hear from Shams and Woj about who was talking to who and what deals might be on the table, imagine if we could just see Sam Presti walk over to Rob Pelinka and start having a chat.
I’m not saying this is a perfect idea — and you can bet the teams have no interest in this change — but the time in between the lottery and the Draft, we lose a little bit of the juice and this would make for an incredible night. Teams can still do all their preparation they normally do, just casting a slightly wider net. You’d still see the same trades happen, because those typically involve picks later in the first round that are already set, as has been the case so far this offseason. Trades involving lottery picks usually don’t happen til those teams are on the clock, anyways, as everyone wants to see who will be available.
The NBA is an entertainment product first, something they remind us of all the time. Let’s embrace that and really kick the tension of Draft night up a few notches by doing the lottery right before it.