pinnacle of basketball

Chapter 360 A Call From the Government

"A total of 208 players participated in the draft, creating the record for the most participation in NBA draft history."

In the office of president Kevin Stern, a staff member was reporting the general situation of the draft. Hearing this astonishing number, Stern did not show excessive joy on his face, but more of a sad expression. According to the practice of the NBA draft, only the top 60 players in the draft will successfully enter the NBA every year, and the rest will all be defined as undrafted.

208 people participate in the draft, only 60 people can be drafted, and the remaining 148 people will be eliminated. What a cruel number, this number has never exceeded 100 in previous years.

Since the moment the Stern family successfully "recaptured" the position of NBA president from the hands of Adam Silver, Kevin Stern has abandoned many drawbacks in the NBA, and is committed to bringing the NBA back to the way it was originally operated by David Stern.

Kevin Stern has also done this, and he is more like fulfilling David Stern's unfulfilled last wish, which is to expand the scale of the NBA draft and allow more talented players to enter the NBA.

However, this was only the beginning of Stern’s transformation. He even put forward a proposal to expand the draft, hoping to increase the original two-round draft to three rounds, and increase the number of selected players from 60 to 90. This proposal has already been put forward. It has been resisted by the entire league. The management of each team believes that this decision will greatly reduce the quality of the draft. Many players who do not have the strength of the NBA will join the league, which will lower the overall level of the league.

Some teams have even made it clear that if they get a third-round pick, they will give up the pick and leave the position vacant, and they are unwilling to forcefully choose low-quality rookies.

Stern understands the team’s intentions. Today’s NBA has undergone tremendous changes compared to David Stern’s era. The most obvious is that the salary cap of the team has been raised, which has led to bigger and bigger contracts for players. Most of the contracts of star players are above 4000 million in annual salary.

However, this situation has changed this year, because too many young talents will flood into the league this year, and at least 100 players have the strength to compete in the NBA, so each team has responded to Stern's proposal, but only this year.

Stern is of course excited about this, but he hopes that this policy can become the norm, not a temporary reform, so he has delayed introducing this policy.

Unless, the management of each team agrees to keep the third-round pick in the future draft.

At present, 8 teams have agreed to this proposal, but for a proposal to take effect in the NBA, the owners of 30 teams must agree. However, if one team is different from the other teams, the proposal will not take effect.

This is a rule handed down from the time of David Stern. The purpose is to respect every team and maximize the rights of the team.

On Stern’s desk, the draft reports of the players are evenly divided into two parts. On the left hand side are the top 100 players who are most likely to be drafted into the league. On the right hand side, they are basically guaranteed to be undrafted, but undrafting does not mean that they will completely miss the NBA. There have been many examples of undrafted picks being picked up and claimed by teams before, including the best defensive player winner Ben Wallace.

Therefore, Kevin Stern respects every talent and stacks the two reports together.

Mu Chenfeng's draft application has a big number "7", which means that his overall strength is ranked seventh, which is basically in line with his draft position.

"The management of each team is pretty safe." The annual draft is like a pass for Kevin, because the team management will basically take action at this time, and the free agent trial field will also open at the same time as the draft. Each team will reinforce the team at this time.

Therefore, the moment the draft is over, the league will look different.

"It's pretty quiet at the moment, only individual teams and some role players have reached verbal agreements."

"It shouldn't be." Kevin Stern thinks this is the calm before the storm, because this year's free agent market has flooded many big fish, and the most important one is Barrett, the head star of the Chicago Bulls. The superstar's contract has the last year left, but Barrett has applied to the team to leave the team not long ago, and clearly told the team that this will be his last season with the Bulls. Even if he is not traded, he will not play for Chicago next season.

The management are all shrewd guys, so they will not send Barrett into the player market in vain. Barrett is very attractive to other teams, and even some teams' transaction offers far exceed the Bulls' expectations, which makes the Bulls management very excited.

In the pursuit of Barrett, the Boston Celtics and the New York Knicks are far ahead. New York has enough salary space and is in a big ball market. Even if the transaction has not been completed and is only in the "rumor" stage, people have already believed that Barrett will wear New York or the Celtics next season.

In addition to Barrett, there are many star players who may change clubs after the draft.

"It's so peaceful." Kevin was fiddling with the team logos and LOGOs of each team. Tomorrow, he would personally hand over the logos of these teams to each of the selected players.

Stern connected teams and players together, and made his own guesses on the results of the draft. After all, he is the president of the NBA. Stern’s judgment on the draft is very accurate. In the past five draft conferences after he accepted, he was almost right about all the results of the draft. Only a few choices were slightly different from reality, but they did not have much impact.

This time, Stern also gave his own guess. He predicted that the Miami Heat will use their No. 76 pick to win William, while Oscar will enter Los Angeles, and Mu Chenfeng will join the Philadelphia [-]ers.

Just as Stern was making final preparations for the draft, he received a mysterious phone call from the government. In the USA, the NBA is a completely independent league entity that has no relationship with the government, and the government will not interfere with any operations and operations related to the NBA.

However, this time he received a call from the government.

After hanging up the phone, Stern's expression was very ugly. Normally, the government and the NBA seldom contact each other. The sudden call was unusual, and it was even more unusual when it happened on the eve of the draft.

(End of this chapter)