2020 NBA draft

2020 NBA draft

The 2020 NBA draft was held on November 18, 2020. The first pick was made by the Minnesota Timberwolves, who selected Anthony Edwards out of Georgia. The draft lottery was originally scheduled to take place on May 19, 2020, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it was instead held on August 20. This draft was the first since 1975 to be held not in June and was also the second to be done later than that month after the inaugural 1947 draft.

About 2020 NBA draft in brief

Summary 2020 NBA draftThe 2020 NBA draft was held on November 18, 2020. The first pick was made by the Minnesota Timberwolves, who selected Anthony Edwards out of Georgia. This draft was the first since 1975 to be held not in June and was also the second to be done later than that month after the inaugural 1947 draft, which was conducted in July. The draft lottery was originally scheduled to take place on May 19, 2020, but due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it was instead held on August 20. The NBA conducts an annual lottery to determine the draft order. Every NBA team that missed the playoffs won a top-four pick, but teams with worse records have a better chance at winning. This year, the Sacramento Kings won the lottery despite having a better overall record to conclude the regular season than the New Orleans Pelicans, who were scheduled to conclude their season on the final day of the season. The Sacramento Kings also won the draft lottery despite a tiebreaker over the Pelicans, despite New Orleans having better overall records to conclude its season than Sacramento. The lottery is held to break ties for teams that make the playoffs, but also for teams with equal records with equal odds of making the playoffs.

The event was televised nationally on ESPN and was held via videoconferencing. The invitation-only NBA Draft Combine and the event’s on-court elements was held in multiple phases, lasting from September 28 until November 16, two days before the draft began. At the start of this year’s draft combine, only 60 prospects were confirmed to participate in this event. The top, headlining prospect involved with this combine is LaMelo Ball, an automatically eligible draft prospect that gained fame as a professional player both nationally and overseas years earlier after skipping his junior year of high school and is considered a potential top 3 selection for the draft. Other notable invites include five fully international prospects, two high school postgraduates, and Jay Scrubb, a junior college prospect. Like with prior years, players still held the option to either sit out the combine or have only limited participation there, such as with La Melo Ball doing interviews with teams only. Prior to the draft, the following trades were made and resulted in exchanges of draft picks between the teams. Trade details to follow.