NBA Draft

The year boards cover every draft in league history, each pick listed in order with the franchise that made it and the college the player came from. Historical entries keep the franchise name as it stood at the time, which is why the early boards show clubs that have since moved or folded. Each board also breaks the class down by franchise and by the programs that produced it.

The future picks tracker covers the other direction. Owning a first round pick and receiving one are not the same thing: picks are traded years in advance, protected inside a range, and frequently tied to swap rights that only resolve on draft night. We record those conditions as written rather than summarising them, because the exact wording decides which club ends up selecting.

Every franchise also has its own draft page listing each selection it has made, reachable from the teams directory or by clicking a club name on any board.

Draft size has changed enormously over time, which is worth knowing before comparing classes. The earliest drafts ran to a single round and barely ten selections. By the 1960s and 1970s clubs were picking through ten rounds or more, often taking players who never appeared in a professional game. The draft was cut to seven rounds in 1985 and to its current two rounds in 1989, so a second round pick today is a far scarcer asset than a second round pick was fifty years ago.

That is also why the pick protections in the future picks tracker matter so much. With fewer than sixty selections a year, clubs guard the ones they keep and attach conditions to the ones they trade, and those conditions can defer a pick for years before it finally changes hands.