As the NBA Draft reached its conclusion – and Bol Bol was picked by Miami and then traded to Denver - I started noticing how many hats players were wearing for teams they would never play for. This is for one big reason: all of the trades agreed to before July 6th are just deals that are agreed to “in principle”.
They can’t be called into the league office yet in order to be official. So we had dozens of moments last night where NBA commissioner Adam Silver read a player’s name and the team he was going to, followed another moment where Maria Taylor asked the player how it feels to not be going to that team because they were going somewhere else.
Overall, the entire thing just felt awkward to me because we all know what is happening here and we know all the deals behind the scenes. It also felt redundant that the tv commentators had to constantly remind us that a certain pick by a team wasn’t actually being made by that team. The Lakers serve as a good example for this. On the tv screen, it showed the 4th pick and the Lakers needs, but everyone else was talking about what Hunter would mean for the Hawks. It just seems silly to me that we can’t make these trades official sooner. ESPN had no problem acknowledging it so why didn’t the NBA? We can at least understand that who is finally picking for who.
This leads me to my hat problem. When De’Andre Hunter was selected, he even put on a Lakers’ hat and shook the commissioners’ hand…even though he’ll never play a game for them in his life.
It also confuses fans who are attending the actual draft. If you’re a Miami fan who’s been sitting there for three hours, when you see Bol Bol get picked you think your team got Bol Bol! When you go home though (or look at your phone), then you find out that you don’t have Bol Bol. Why not just tell everyone in the moment when a trade happens? The NBA is known for being a transparent league. Why now just acknowledge everything happening behind the scene?
I don’t know what all the implications would be for the league to just acknowledge the trades without them being completed yet, but I can’t imagine it would be that hard to just be open about all of these trades happening before the actual trade date happens. Maybe the NBA could also actually come up with a solution to fix this problem. For example, the NBA could do like what the NFL does and have free agency happen before the draft. This could have ripple effects because this would move back Summer League and also many teams would draft more for need than potential, but it would be at least interesting for the league to look into.
I think the simplest solution would just be for the NBA to acknowledge proposed trades in the moment. Do like the NFL does, and before they make the pick say: “there has been a trade!” Then you can get the crowd excited and riled up before you announce the trade and the next pick.
And although I don’t like the trades not going down officially yet, I don’t actually have a problem with the NBA using hats for players because we get legendary moments like this one:
*images taken via ESPN