One of the biggest nights of the NBA calendar is the NBA Draft. As teams try to figure out their future, young studs, primarily from the college basketball circuit, become their saving graces through the draft. These young men come into the league with heavy expectations of the franchise upon them and bring a new era to their teams.
Let’s find out everything there is to know about the 2025 NBA Draft.
What Is the NBA Draft Date in 2025?
The 2025 NBA Draft will be held over a two-day period this year as the 79th iteration of the event. With the two-round format of the draft in place, the first round will take place on June 25, 2025, followed by the second round on June 26.
Usually, the draft has 60 picks spread out over the two rounds — 30 picks per round — among the 30 NBA teams. However, this season, the New York Knicks have one fewer second-round pick, a direct result of a penalty for a free agency violation from 2022.
Where Is the NBA Draft in 2025?
Both rounds of the NBA Draft will commence from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The NBA Draft hasn’t frequently moved locations, with the association wanting to maintain continuity.
Since the shift to Brooklyn, the 2025 event will be the fifth consecutive draft held at the Barclays Center. Before that, it was neighboring Newark, New Jersey that hosted the event (Prudential Center) for two seasons.
But before New Jersey, it was the “Mecca of Basketball” — Madison Square Garden — which had been the host to the NBA Draft for an entire decade.
Who Is Eligible for the NBA Draft?
The 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the players’ union set ground rules for the incoming draft class and its eligibility.
- Drafted players must be at least 19 years of age during the calendar year.
- Players can withdraw from the draft 10 days after the end of the NBA Draft Combine.
- International players are automatically eligible if they are at least 22 years old during the calendar year, or have signed a contract with a professional basketball team not in the NBA within the United States.
- Non-international players are automatically eligible if they don’t have college eligibility, or are four years out of high school, or signed and played under a basketball contract with a team not in the NBA.
- For non-automatic eligibility, players have to write a direct letter to the league with more than 60 days remaining to the draft.
What Are the Pre-Draft Events?
Before the official NBA Draft, the G League Combine, Draft Combine, and Draft Lottery take place to offer fans and teams a better look at their future.
While the Combines are a skills challenge to measure players’ talents and interview them to understand organizational fit, the NBA Draft Lottery is the first step for teams to know their future.
This year, all three events will take place in Chicago. The G League Combine will take place from May 9-11, while the Draft Combine happens for a week starting on May 11.
The NBA Draft Lottery takes place on May 12.
What Is the NBA Draft Lottery?
The NBA Draft Lottery is a system designed to assign the top 14 picks to the teams who miss out on the NBA playoffs. They are separated with different odds based on their record during the regular season, with the worst three teams holding the best odds.
- Team 1: 14.0%
- Team 2: 14.0%
- Team 3: 14.0%
- Team 4: 12.5%
- Team 5: 10.5%
- Team 6: 9.0%
- Team 7: 7.5%
- Team 8: 6.0%
- Team 9: 4.5%
- Team 10: 3.0%
- Team 11: 2.0%
- Team 12: 1.5%
- Team 13: 1.0%
- Team 14: 0.5%
In case teams are tied with identical records, tie-breaking procedures can shift each individual odds. For example, last season, Detroit and Washington had 14.0% odds, whereas the next two teams were split at 13.3% and 13.2%, respectively.
The NBA Board of Governors approved the current format which was first adopted in 2019, ensuring that the team with the worst record would receive no worse than the fifth pick, an increase from the previous number of four.
Moreover, it ensured that three teams would have similar 14% odds of acquiring the No. 1 pick, changing it from a discrepant 25%/19.9%/15.6% system.
How Does the NBA Draft Lottery Work?
The Draft Lottery determines the first 14 picks, with drawings designing the first four picks. After that, teams are assigned their position in the inverse order of their records.
The lottery process takes place separately from the national broadcast, with specific media members and officials in attendance for the drawings.
Fourteen ping-pong balls numbered 1 through 14 will be placed in a lottery machine. There are 1,001 possible combinations when four balls are drawn out of 14, without regard to their order of selection. Before the lottery, 1,000 of those 1,001 combinations will be assigned to the 14 participating lottery teams.
The lottery machine is manufactured by the Smart Play Company, a leading manufacturer of state lottery machines throughout the United States. Smart Play also weighs, measures and certifies the ping-pong balls before the drawing.
Starting with a 20-second mixing period, the first ball is selected, with the next three coming at 10-second intervals. The team with the correct order gets the No. 1 pick before the process is repeated for the other three picks.
In case of the same team coming up twice, results are discarded and drawn again. A representative from Ernst & Young is appointed to ensure fair and accurate proceedings during the event.
What Happens to Picks 15-60?
The rest of the picks follow a simple inverse-order pattern of the records of the remaining teams. Each NBA team is given one selection in the first and second rounds, which like any other sport, can be traded amongst teams.
History of the NBA Draft
Since the Draft Lottery began in 1966, the league has gone through multiple variations to assign picks to teams.
- For the first 18 years of the league, a coin toss between the two worst teams in each Conference decided the first two picks, with the other teams picking in inverse order.
- In 1984, a true lottery system was adopted to ensure all non-playoff teams got a chance to draft high in the lottery.
- In 1986, that number was reduced to three, with the rest of the teams picking in inverse order from their records.
- Another change occurred in 1989 when a weighted system was adopted, with the worst team getting 11 out of 66 possible chances to draft the No. 1 overall pick, and numbers dropping by one subsequently.
- 1993 brought another change with the 16.7% chance for the worst team rising to 25%, whereas the 1.5% chance for the best non-playoff team dropped to 0.5%.
- To account for the addition of the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Toronto Raptors, the total letter participating teams were increased to 13, with teams 2-6 and 8-12 having decreasingly lesser chance, with the 13th team still at 0.5%.
- The addition of the Charlotte Bobcats in 2004 increased the number from 13 to 14, before the current format was approved in September of 2017 before being formally adopted in 2019.
