After having reached an agreement with the players’ union to make the 2024 draft a two-day affair, the NBA has officially announced the start times for this year’s event (Twitter link).
According to the league, day one (the first round) will start at its usual time of 8:00 pm Eastern on Wednesday, June 26. However, day two (the second round) will begin earlier in the day on Thursday, June 27, airing at 4:00 pm ET.
As Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic points out (via Twitter), the NBA may have initially planned to start round two in prime-time on Thursday, rather than in the afternoon, but with a U.S. presidential debate scheduled for the evening of June 27, it makes sense to avoid competing with that broadcast.
In past years, the first round of the draft has begun at 8:00 pm ET on a Thursday and typically runs for three-plus hours, with the second round not getting underway until closer to 11:30 pm ET. That has resulted in round two wrapping up well past midnight and post-draft updates about undrafted free agents agreeing to two-way contracts and Exhibit 10 deals continuing well into the early hours of Friday morning.
Having split the draft into two days this year, the NBA should be able to finish up the first night at a more reasonable hour on Wednesday, with the second round concluding in the early evening on Thursday (teams will have four minutes instead of two to make second-round selections this year). Those post-draft reports on UDFA signings will likely stream in throughout Thursday evening and into the night following the conclusion of the second round.
The full draft order for 2024, from the Hawks at No. 1 to the Mavericks at No. 58, can be found right here.
It’s sort of comical that the NBA is trying to make Day 2 of the draft a much bigger television event, and now have to start it at a time when a LOT of people will still be at work, unable to watch TV…
They knew the debate stuff was going to be this year and take a primetime slot. Why decide to introduce the 2 day draft now instead of next year?
Hilarious. More than half the picks will be traded or draft-n-stash euros nobody’s heard of.
A third will be guys going on stage wearing hats of teams they never play for due to antiquated trade rules that 95% of the audience doesn’t understand.
This is not a production made for primetime, much less 2 consecutive primetimes.
NBA continues to pretend it’s the NFL.
The NBA really doesn’t have confidence in day 2 if they are afraid of going up against 2 out of touch old men…
They weren’t going to get people tuning in, so why not have a good excuse in the timing to tell the new media rights holders…