2016 NBA draft

• 1. Introduction

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  The 2016 NBA draft opened on the 23rd of June 2016, inside Barclays Center in Brooklyn. ESPN carried the broadcast nationally, and The Vertical streamed the whole night live, a first in NBA draft history. NBA teams spent the evening picking college players and other eligible prospects, including a large group from outside the United States. Weeks earlier, the league had already run its annual draft lottery, and the way it landed would turn out unlike anything before it. On stage that night, players from a striking number of countries would set new marks for how global an NBA draft could look. What made that lottery so unusual, and just how far did this draft's international reach really go?

• 2. A Lottery Without Precedent

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  On the 17th of May 2016, the NBA held its annual draft lottery to set the order for the fourteen teams that had missed the playoffs. Every non-playoff team had a shot at a top three pick, though teams with worse records held better odds. Before the lottery even began, the league had settled a tie in the standings with a random drawing on the 15th of April 2016.

  The Philadelphia 76ers carried the NBA's worst record, 10-72, into the drawing. They held the highest chance to win the top pick, 26.9 percent. That figure combined a 25 percent baseline chance with a 1.9 percent chance tied to a pick-swap deal with the Sacramento Kings. Either path would have handed Philadelphia the No. 1 selection. Philadelphia won, and kept the pick.

  The Los Angeles Lakers stayed at the second position, matching what their regular-season record had projected. The Boston Celtics, holding a pick acquired from the Brooklyn Nets, kept the third slot as well. The Phoenix Suns held two selections with a real chance to move, more than any other team. Their own fourth pick had just a 9.9 percent chance of staying put, the least likely outcome in the whole lottery. Their thirteenth pick, acquired earlier from the Washington Wizards, had a 97.8 percent combined chance of landing at 13 or 14.

  Every single selection in the lottery ended up exactly where it had been slotted beforehand. That had never happened before in NBA history, not since the lottery system began in 1985. Officials placed the odds of that exact outcome at 1.8 percent. A simpler figure, a 1-in-55 chance, is often cited for the lottery instead, since it only determines the top three slots.

  That frozen lottery order set the stage for a draft night that turned out to be historic for a completely different reason. What mattered most by the end of the night was not records or win totals, but where the players themselves came from.

• 3. Records Across Borders

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  Ben Simmons became the No. 1 pick in this draft, and with it, the second Australian ever to go first overall, after Andrew Bogut. Jakob Pöltl became the first Austrian ever selected into the NBA. Ben Bentil became the first Ghanaian to hear his name called at a draft. Abdel Nader became the first Egyptian drafted since the 1990 NBA draft. Zhou Qi and Wang Zhelin became the first two Chinese players taken in the same draft since the 2007 NBA draft.

  Five Frenchmen were selected, the most in a single draft in league history: Guerschon Yabusele, Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot, David Michineau, Isaia Cordinier, and Petr Cornelie. Twenty-eight different countries were represented among the players picked, more than in any draft before it. That total pushed this draft past the 2004 NBA draft as the most culturally diverse draft in league history.

  Three players came out of the Serbian club Mega Leks for the second time in draft history: Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, Ivica Zubac, and Rade Zagorac. The only previous time that had happened was the 2014 NBA draft.

  Getting all these prospects onto the board, foreign and domestic alike, depended on eligibility rules that had just been rewritten months before the draft.

• 4. New Eligibility Rules

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  On the 13th of January 2016, the NCAA Division I council approved a new rule that changed the draft landscape for college players. Declaring for the draft no longer automatically cost a player his college eligibility. He kept it as long as he did not sign with a professional team outside the NBA or with an agent. He also had to withdraw from the draft on time. NCAA players gained until 10 days after the NBA Draft Combine to withdraw and keep that eligibility. For the 2016 draft, that deadline fell on the 25th of May, about five weeks later than the old mid-April cutoff. Under the new rule, NCAA players could also attend the combine and one workout per year with each NBA team without losing eligibility. They could also declare for the draft and withdraw more than once. Previously, the NCAA had treated a second declaration as a permanent loss of college eligibility.

  The 2011 collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and its players union set the framework the draft still ran under. That CBA, reached to end the 2011 lockout, made no immediate changes to draft rules. It did call for a committee of owners and players to study future changes. Every drafted player still had to be at least 19 years old during the calendar year of the draft. That meant 2016 entrants had to be born on or before the 31st of December 1997.

  Players without automatic eligibility had to declare in writing to the NBA office no later than 60 days before the draft. For 2016, that deadline fell on the 24th of April. After that date, early entrants could attend NBA pre-draft camps and individual team workouts to show off their skills. A player could still withdraw his name any time before the final declaration date, 10 days before the draft. Hiring an agent, though, forfeited a player's remaining college eligibility no matter what happened on draft night. The CBA allowed a player to withdraw from the draft twice, a limit the new NCAA rule finally matched.

  Those new rules were about to be tested by more college underclassmen than had ever declared for a single draft before.

• 5. The Underclassmen Rush

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  A record 162 underclassmen declared for the draft by the 24th of April deadline, 116 of them college players. By the 25th of May withdrawal deadline, 57 of those players chose to return to school instead. That left 59 college underclassmen who ultimately stayed in the draft.

  Thirty of those underclassmen went completely undrafted, the most undrafted college underclassmen in a single draft on record. Anyone who had hired an agent and still went undrafted lost the right to return to NCAA basketball for the 2016-17 season.

  International players declaring for the first time could also withdraw about 10 days before the draft, by the 13th of June. Forty-six international players initially expressed interest in entering the draft. Thirty-three of them withdrew by the 13th of June, leaving just 13 international candidates in the pool. Combining both groups, 72 underclassmen entered the 2016 NBA draft in total.

  Before any of these underclassmen could be measured against each other on draft night, many of them had to prove themselves first. That test came at a very different event, in Chicago.

• 6. Inside The Combine

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  The invitation-only NBA Draft Combine ran in Chicago from the 10th to the 15th of May, with on-court testing on the 12th and 13th. Sixty-three players took part, including two alternates whose invitations were accepted, Jaron Blossomgame and Marcus Lee. Zhou Qi of the Xinjiang Flying Tigers was the only international player invited who accepted his invitation that year.

  Wayne Selden Jr. was originally set to compete but injured himself before the combine began. Sheldon McClellan of the Miami Hurricanes took his place in the on-court events. Buddy Hield, the consensus national college player of the year for 2015-16, took part only in off-court activities. His graduation ceremony at the University of Oklahoma conflicted with the on-court schedule. A. J. Hammons withdrew his name from the combine entirely on the day the on-court events began.

  Tyler Ulis, a Kentucky sophomore who would go on to play point guard for the Phoenix Suns, broke a combine record. He weighed in at 149.2 pounds, the lightest player ever recorded there. Nine of the combine's participants returned to their colleges once the event ended. In the days that followed, some of the measurements taken at the combine were put under review. Several prospects had produced results that looked questionable next to their earlier physical testing.

  A handful of these same combine participants would be back in the spotlight on draft night itself. This time, they would be seated in a very different kind of room.

• 7. The Green Room

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  Each draft year, the NBA reserves a special space at the site for roughly 15-20 invited players, their families, and their agents. That section is informally known as the green room. When a player's name is called, he leaves that room and walks onto the stage. Players outside that group sit in the stands with fans and make the same walk if they are picked. The NBA sent 19 such invitations for this draft on the 18th of June, one day before the 2016 NBA Finals ended.

  Five players were added to that green room list after it was first announced, a record for a single draft. They were Malik Beasley, Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot, Dejounte Murray, Malachi Richardson, and Denzel Valentine. The rest of the list included players like Wade Baldwin IV of Vanderbilt and Dragan Bender of Maccabi Tel Aviv. It also included Jaylen Brown of California and Domantas Sabonis of Gonzaga.

  Not every player stayed with the team that called his name that night. Trades were still being worked out throughout the evening, sending several of that night's picks to entirely different franchises before it was over.