Community Shootaround: Draft, Free Agency Dates

The draft is coming up in less than two weeks but there are factions within the league that would like to see the June date changed in the future.

Last year, the Rockets made a proposal to move free agency ahead of the draft and some teams, including the Celtics, endorsed it.

Whether the proposal will ever gather enough steam to be enacted is uncertain. But Celtics director of player personnel Austin Ainge recently spelled out the benefits of making the switch.

“I think that most teams build from veteran players first,” Ainge said. “If you have a Top 5 pick, you’re most likely a rebuilding team, so free agency isn’t affecting that. … And then, all of the other teams, you more likely are fitting in draft picks in and around a veteran core group. So I think the calendar should follow our decision-making tree. So I think it should be switched.”

Draft-day decisions would become clearer if most of the free agents had already signed. It would certainly help teams this summer like the Raptors (Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green), Celtics (Kyrie Irving) and Bucks (Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez) if they already knew which key free in-house agents they re-signed or lost. It would also help a rebuilding team with cap space like the Knicks, who could base their draft-day options on how successful they were in free agency.

Salary-cap situations would also be clearer if it were already known whether players with contract options decided to stay or chose free agency.

It could also facilitate trades before and during the draft.

However, there are drawbacks. If the draft were pushed back for a month or so, it would greatly affect the summer leagues and force the acclimation process for rookies to be accelerated.

Would underclassmen get a few extra weeks to decide whether to stay in the draft? If so, it would create even more headaches for college coaches, who are already struggling with the uncertainty regarding the status of key players.

That leads us to our question of the day: Should the NBA swap the dates for free agency and the draft?

Please take to the comments section to weigh in on this topic. We look forward to your input.

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