Cooper Flagg and other top draft prospects are already taking over NBA headlines, even as the dust has barely settled on the Finals. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
Yes and yes — and no, the NBA does not have any plans to change its calendar.
The question was posed this week to a top NBA official about just why the league gives its fans barely any time to digest its biggest event before another one of massive significance comes along. To Byron Spruell, the NBA’s president of league operations, the biggest factor was simply a lack of impetus to fix what ain’t broke.
“I think our model works,” said Spruell, who has held his position since 2016. “We’ve had it this way for a number of years and haven’t had a burning platform, necessarily, to change it.”
Spruell also pointed to other factors, such as international basketball competitions commonly scheduled for later in the summer, that aren’t as much of a concern for a certain behemoth of the American sports landscape. That would be the NFL, which has garnered praise for its savviness in sprinkling offseason events throughout the spring, generating headlines and retaining fan interest during otherwise fallow periods. Those events very much include the NFL draft process, which annually takes place over two months following the Super Bowl, and the league has even planted a flag in May for its schedule release.
The first thing NFL fans get to chew on after the final whistle of the season is the draft combine, which has the stage to itself in late February. By contrast, the NBA held its combine in May, when its conference semifinals were unfolding. Basketball fans could be forgiven if they devoted less of their attention at the time to Tre Johnson’s draft-class-leading mark in lane agility and more to the New York Knicks and Indiana Pacers upsetting the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers.
The NBA, which won’t stage any more true games until the preseason in early October, arguably could get a lot more bang for its buck by providing compelling content to fans and media pundits long after the champagne corks have been popped (which, in the Thunder’s case, already took a while). To Spruell, though, the league’s long-standing model “actually works for us, to where now, after the Finals are done, we pick up right with the draft and get to summer league.”
Spruell noted there were suggestions in the past from some corners of the NBA that “maybe we push the combine from May to June, after the Finals, you have free agency in July, and then you go with the draft in late July/early August and push summer league to August.
“But to me,” he continued, “that probably is a little bit of a conflict if we’re thinking about our global business, Olympics, World Cup competitions, etc.”
Since the Dream Team famously took over the 1992 Olympics, the U.S. men’s basketball squads at the Summer Games and FIBA World Cup events usually have featured NBA players. Given that the next World Cup will be held from late August to mid-September in 2027, and that the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics is scheduled for the second half of July, it would be difficult for the NBA to place offseason events near or around those dates.
The NFL finally could have the Olympics to think about when flag football makes its debut at the 2028 Games, but it still won’t have the aforementioned “global business” of the NBA’s multi-league umbrella status. The WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and Basketball Africa League are all at least co-owned and -operated by the NBA. The league is also looking to create some kind of European counterpart, but it already can lay claim to a year-round toehold in the American sports calendar. The WNBA, with attendance and viewership higher than ever, offers fans a high-level professional basketball fix with its regular season through the summer and playoffs in the early fall.
As for a suggestion that holding the draft, which starts Wednesday night, so soon after the Finals might be unfair to teams that go deep in the playoffs — particularly, this year, to the Thunder and Pacers after they battled to Sunday’s Game 7 — Spruell said those organizations were “all over that, in terms of preparation.” (NBA teams also don’t have the same time needs as NFL teams, which have to scout approximately 1,000 college players. While the NFL draft usually comprises around 260 picks, this year’s NBA draft will be finished after fewer than 60.)
More than anything, though, the theme Spruell returned to was how deeply ingrained the NBA’s sequence for its draft and ensuing free agency period has become in the way its teams go about their business. Dramatically changing the NBA calendar has “never really been a big topic,” at least within the league, he said of his experience as operations head.
“I think our teams have historically gotten accustomed to it,” Spruell said of the draft timing. “Not that we wouldn’t ever explore changing it, but I think people have gotten accustomed to it.”