After a few weeks of discussions, the NBA and NBPA have come to an agreement that will turn June’s NBA Draft into a two-night event, pushing the second round to Friday night, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
The NBA and NBPA have now finalized plans for the two-day draft in June, sources tell ESPN. https://t.co/NpysqVEHvQ
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 31, 2024
You may ask, why would the NBA do this? Well, mostly it’s another thing to sell to ESPN as they negotiate a new TV deal. There’s not a lot of live sports events to put on national TV in late June, and stretching the Draft to a second night gives them some more inventory. Beyond that, they can stretch out the first round to be even longer, if they want, giving teams more time to make picks and trades if they don’t have to worry as much about the second round running past midnight — to be clear, no one who watches the draft wants this, but I could see it being considered.
In case the TV portion of this wasn’t clearly the driving force, the second round happening at ESPN’s studios should clear that up.
The NBA will hold the first-round of the draft at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on June 26 and the second-round at ESPN's Seaport District studios in Manhattan on June 27, sources said. https://t.co/IMqh8RxAEM
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 31, 2024
The league also sold it as a chance to give their teams more time to prepare for the second round, as they’ll know what players are left after the first round concludes and they can all reset and craft their plan for Night 2. It’s surely modeled off of how the NFL expanded its Draft to be a three-day event, although the second round of the NBA Draft is far different than the second and third rounds of the NFL Draft in terms of impact players coming into the league. The biggest positive of it might be giving the second round guys a bit more shine, as the TV broadcast will, in theory, be able to focus more on those picks rather than playing catch up talking about first round picks from earlier in the night.