The NBA Draft Abolition Case

As communities across the country celebrated June 19 earlier this week, I reflected on the holiday’s relationship to Thursday’s NBA draft, the annual rite of passage for young, mostly black players joining the National Basketball Association.

Like most companies, the NBA has embraced Juneteenth. However, if the league wanted to make a significant contribution to liberation, it should consider abolishing the draft and restoring freedom of choice.

Such a move would benefit an entire class of athletes, regardless of race, creed or color.

Abolishing the draft would make virtually every college-age player entering the NBA a free agent. This is what most of them have experienced throughout their careers when deciding on an AAU team, where to play prom, or which college to attend. Now, on the precipice of the highest levels of competition and reward, choice is being taken.

In exchange for the privilege of playing in the NBA, athletes forgo the choice. They agree to gamble where they are meant to gamble and accept predetermined compensation.

Left to right: San Antonio Spurs CEO RC Buford, Managing Partner Peter J. Holt and General Manager Brian Wright pose for a photo during the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery at McCormick Place May 16 in Chicago.

Jeff Haynes/NBAE via Getty Images

Admittedly, the draft will probably never be abolished. In its 73 years of existence, the draft has been the primary vehicle for injecting fresh blood into the NBA. The draft has also become a mega event. For many families, the draft is a June 19th-style celebration of economic liberation. Far from bemoaning their fate, smartly dressed recruits will fulfill their childhood dreams of walking across the stage and hugging the NBA commissioner.

However, this does not mean that the draft should not be abolished or at least revised.

Earlier this week, I spoke to attorney and sports agent C. Lamont Smith and Oscar Robertson, legendary Hall of Fame guardian, about the draft.

Smith has been in the industry for 35 years and is the founder and CEO of All Pro Sports and Entertainment. He said: “A draft system only benefits owners because it allows them to get labor at a below-market cost.”

Robertson, whose 1976 lawsuit against the NBA paved the way for a free hand, said, “The draft is terrible for really good basketball players.”

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First, the abolition of the draft would lead to a bidding war for the services of talented young athletes and would allow free market principles to be applied in the world of team sports.

As an example, Smith cited Victor Wembanyama, the crown jewel of this year’s draft. Wembanyama is expected to be picked first by the San Antonio Spurs.

“They’re touting him as a generational player who hasn’t been seen since LeBron [James]”,”
said Smith. “Well, if he’s that good a player, he’s going to get into a slot system where he’s capped at probably $4 million a year for the first two or three years of his NBA existence. If this were an open market situation where there was a bidding war over him, this boy could be a $300 million or $400 million player right now.

“The problem with systems like this is that they trap these players during a few years of peak earnings.”

Smith argued that the draft was depressing the market for young players in their prime. He also contrasted the NBA draft with the field of law.

“And second, it’s an unequal negotiating position because once you draft that player, you have the exclusive rights to that player,” Smith said. “So you recruit him and you put him in a weak market in his peak earning years because your body is a depreciating commodity. And the older you get after reaching flowering, the more it loses value.

“If I wanted to go out as a lawyer and all the law firms in the world said, ‘The maximum we’ll pay any attorney is $100,000,’ it would never work.”

A lawyer like Smith can look forward to a career spanning more than 35 years. This doesn’t apply to the NBA’s wave of new recruits.

“Why would you take open market availability away from people who can only do this for 10 to 13 years at most?” said Smith.

NBA legends Oscar Robertson (left) and Jerry West (right) pose for a photo during the NBA 75 group photo as part of the 2022 NBA All-Star Weekend on February 20, 2022 at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.

Michael J. LeBrecht II/NBAE via Getty Images

Realizing that the draft remains in place but needs an overhaul, Smith proposed a compromise: keep the draft but eliminate the slott positions—the salary caps for rookie pay. “Take all that away, but you still have a draft,” Smith said. “The team designing the player has the opportunity to deal exclusively with that player. Let’s just say you hire him and the deadline is 30 days. If you are unable to agree terms with that player after those 30 days, that player is on the open market.”

Seems like a reasonable compromise. The bad teams still have access to the best youth players but have to pay the market price.

“When I deal with San Antonio, I’ll tell you what I think my player is worth,” Smith said. “If you tell me what you want to pay and we can’t agree on the terms, then it goes on the open market. You can counteract the bad teams by giving them such an advantage. But don’t tie the player to just one team for years. This is forced servitude.”

The very first NBA draft was in 1950 when the league transitioned from the Basketball Association of America to the National Basketball Association.

Ten years later, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West—two of the greatest players in NBA history—joined the NBA. Robertson was drafted first by the modest Cincinnati Royals. West was drafted second by the Minneapolis Lakers, who moved to Los Angeles in 1960.

The Lakers had won five titles by the time West was drafted and had a superstar player in future Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor.

“Jerry goes to LA, they’ve got stars, they’ve had a compliment of players,” Robertson said. “When I went to Cincinnati, I didn’t have anyone. To be honest, we didn’t have a very good team at all. I’ve just come from school here. They rely on me to hold everything together for them.”

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Robertson has done an excellent job of keeping the royals together.

From 1961 to 1965, the Royals managed to set records. The Royals finished second in the division twice, and in 1963 Cincinnati had the NBA’s best record. In 1964, Robertson was the league’s MVP, while teammate Jerry Lucas was the rookie of the year.

1965, 1966 and 1967 saw first-round eliminations. Cincinnati missed the playoffs in 1968, 1969, and 1970.

There was a five-year period when royals never surpassed .500. Prior to the 1970-71 season, Robertson was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he teamed with rookie center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to win an NBA title.

The Bucks selected Abdul-Jabbar first overall; Draft supporters say there’s no way Kareem would have targeted Milwaukee if there hadn’t been a draft. In 1956, the St. Louis Hawks drafted Russell but traded him to center Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan.

“What would have happened to Bill Russell if he hadn’t been transferred from St. Louis to Boston?” said Robertson.

For the most part, Robertson’s career with the royals has been a steep climb in an anonymous market that has presented challenges for African Americans.

“I don’t think I would have gone to Cincinnati, I can tell you that.”
– Oscar Robertson on where he would have played if there hadn’t been an NBA draft in 1960

“Cincinnati was a difficult city,” he said. “You couldn’t visit certain places; It was difficult to get into business. LA was different and Jerry was a star. Elgin was a star. LA was a star city. A lot of things that happened out there you couldn’t have done in Cincinnati.”

Robertson said that if there hadn’t been a draft he might not have picked Los Angeles, but he definitely wouldn’t have picked the Royals.

“I don’t think I would have gone to Cincinnati, I can tell you that,” he said.

Getting rid of the draft would get rid of tanking, but it wouldn’t eliminate poorly managed teams and teams that didn’t necessarily want to win. It would simply mean that talented young players would not be forced to play for these teams.

In the end, a no-draft NBA would give young players something they’ve been sorely missing: freedom of choice.