History

The National Basketball League and Basketball Association of America held separate drafts until they merged into the National Basketball Association in 1949, when the NBA draft began.

The NBA took over the idea of a territorial pick from the BAA. Before the draft began, a team could elect to give up its first-round pick in order to choose a player from its geographical area. One of the most significant, and most controversial, territorial selections was the Philadelphia Warriors' choice of Wilt Chamberlain in 1959. Before attending the University of Kansas, Chamberlain had been a high school star in Philadelphia. Eddie Gottlieb, owner of the Warriors, argued that he should be considered a territorial pick for Philadelphia, since Kansas didn't have a team in the NBA. The NBA Board of Governors agreed with Gottlieb. As a result, the Warriors won the rights to Chamberlain, who would otherwise probably have been selected by Cincinnati or Detroit, who had the first and second choices in the draft that year.

The territorial pick was eliminated in 1966, when another wrinkle was added: a coin flip between the last-place finishers in each division to determine which would choose first.
As the league expanded during the next two decades, the media and fans began to suspect that teams might be deliberately losing games late in the season in order to get a better draft position.

To counter that idea, the NBA in 1985 introduced its draft lottery. Under the original lottery system, all non-playoff teams were given a chance to win the first draft choice. The lottery determined the draft order in the first round only for all of those teams. That was changed in 1987 to determine the order of selection for the first three teams only.

In 1990, a weighted system was adopted to give teams with poorer records a better chance of winning the first pick in the draft. The team with the worst regular-season record had 11 chances out of 66, the second-worst team had 10 chances, and so on down to the non-playoff team with the best record, which had only 1 chance in 66.

Under the present system, first used in 1994, the team with the worst record has a 25-percent chance of winning the first pick. With the addition of two franchises in 2003 and another in 2004, the number of non-playoff teams involved in the draft lottery has increased from 11 to 14.

In the beginning, the draft just kept going on until none of the teams wanted to make another choice. In 1973, it lasted an absurd 20 rounds. The following year, the league decided on a 10-round limit. That was reduced to seven rounds in 1985, to three rounds in 1988, and to the current two rounds in 1989.

NBA draft records are incomplete from 1949 through 1957. For those years, first-round selections are listed alphabetically by team. From 1958 on, the draft order is shown.

(T) indicates Territorial selection

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