The NBA is steadily laying the foundation for the end of the rule requiring basketball prospects to wait a year after graduating from high school before declaring for the NBA Draft. Adam Silver has been making noise about this for a while, and Condoleezza Rice’s otherwise useless commission recommended it, and anyway…

Atlanta Hawks GM Travis Schlenk told San Francisco radio station 95.7 The Game this morning that he had a deal in place with the Milwaukee Bucks to move up from the 19th pick to the 17th. The Hawks knew they wanted one of two players—including Maryland shooting guard Kevin Huerter—and were sufficiently convinced that…

Arizona big man Deandre Ayton was the first pick of an NBA Draft filled with sad trades and massive fuck-ups. Here’s the full first round:

Despite a report from Awful Announcing stating that reporters associated with NBA broadcast partners were asked by the league not to tip picks, the draft-night focus of ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski could not be shaken. But while Yahoo Sports’ Shams Charania appeared to outright ignore the league’s order, his former…

A nice little heartwarming story early in the NBA Draft came when the Philadelphia 76ers picked Villanova’s Mikal Bridges with the 10th overall pick. Not only has Bridges spent his entire life around Philly, but his mom, Tyneeha Rivers, also works for the Sixers as VP of Human Resources. Mikal and Tyneeha even gave an…

First of all, it’s important to note that making predictions on draft night, or trying to grade teams’ picks, is a fool’s game. None of these guys has played an NBA game yet, and trying to parse the difference between Marvin Bagley III, whom the Kings just drafted at number-two overall, and Luka Doncic, who appeared…

Reporters at ESPN, Turner Sports, and Yahoo will not be tipping picks on Twitter during tonight’s NBA Draft, as reported by intrepid New York Times cub reporter Kevin Draper. The reason is that all three of those media companies are partnering with the NBA on the actual broadcast, which creates incentives that don’t…

The NBA Draft is tonight! It feels terrible.

The NBA Draft: When is it? What is it? Will you, personally, be selected in this draft? Look, man: I don’t know this shit and honestly I don’t appreciate being asked. That said, the NBA Draft is 1) happening on Thursday evening, 2) effectively random and reliably entertaining, and 3) unless your wingspan is…

Michael Porter Jr., a lottery prospect who may be selected by the brain geniuses of Sacramento at No. 2 or may fall somewhere around the seven-ish range, sure has draft experts mumbling about his Character Issues. Their voices descend to bassy, knowing tones, and their sentences swell into ominous generalities.

When the Phoenix Suns draft big lanky Arizona lad Deandre Ayton with the No. 1 overall pick on Thursday, as they are expected to do, they will also receive Josh, Eric, and Alejandro. Those aren’t members of Ayton’s entourage or family, but three distinct personalities that inhabit the very large body of Deandre Ayton.

Any and all pre-draft player prognostication must come with the caveat that no one actually knows anything, at this point. DeAndre Ayton might turn out to be Michael Olowokandi 2.0; Marvin Bagley III could wind up being another Justise Winslow; It’s not impossible that Luka Dončić is in fact Mario Hezonja, operating…

Michael Porter Jr. was once considered one of the clear best two or three prospects in the 2018 NBA Draft, but with one week to go before draft night, concerns about his long-term health that have trailed him all season are becoming more pronounced. Despite playing just 53 minutes for Mizzou last season after…

Slovenian wonderteen and sure-fire top-three pick in the upcoming NBA draft Luka Dončić led his Real Madrid team to a EuroLeague title Sunday, in an 85-80 win over Fenerbahce Dogus Istanbul. Doncic scored 15 points on eight shots, and after the game was named EuroLeague Final Four MVP.

The Knicks did not luck out, which is basically an evergreen sentence. Their lottery pick did not leap into the top three, which had only a six percent chance of occurring last night. It instead landed at nine, as expected. I feel a little good about this.

For what feels like the first time in recent franchise history, the Sacramento Kings got lucky. The Kings briefly held the reins in the NBA’s greatest-ever tank-off last season, but they were soundly out-tanked over the stretch run, and wound up finishing with the lottery’s seventh-best odds after ending the season…

The team with the worst record in the NBA this season, the Phoenix Suns, won the draft lottery tonight, and with it the choice of either Arizona’s Deandre Ayton or Real Madrid’s Luka Dončić. Whoever of those two the Suns don’t pick will likely go to the Sacramento Kings, who defied the odds and took the second spot…

Possible first-overall draft pick Luka Dončić, who’s been playing in Spain with Real Madrid since he was 16, is already the kind of all-around athletic beast who appears to be the final form that every basketball player is evolving towards. He’s a six-foot-eight guard/forward hybrid who’s comfortable shooting on the…

Current NCAA regulations forbid any player who declares for the NBA draft and signs with an agent to return to his college team, even if he goes undrafted. It’s a particularly cruel facet of an already exploitative system, and a rule that’s explicitly designed to keep players within the bounds of the NCAA, where they…

You’ve likely never heard of Joshua Simmons. You certainly hadn’t heard of him when he entered his name in the NBA draft. Five years ago, at 20 years old, Simmons was on the NBA’s official early entry list, despite having played just a handful of games at a junior college 30 minutes east of Greenville, S.C. By the…