Picks on the Move: 23 Years of Draft Trade Precedent

These two will spend the week scanning the league for all kinds of deals. (Leah Hogsten, Salt Lake Tribune)

The NBA’s offseason player movement machine always revs into high gear right around the draft, but this is already primed to be a wild June. On an otherwise sleepy summer afternoon, the marketplace swung open on Sunday with a trade featuring star guard Bradley Beal, and now there’s noise that another 2-time All-Star could change teams this week.

And frankly, we’re just getting started. The NBA Draft is often the hottest day for trade activity in the entire year.

Picks — and the immediacy of the draft process — drive the urgency to get stuff done. In June, teams are as mindful as ever of their shortcomings, plus the salary cap year change gives them options on how to execute a deal. What’s more, ever-changing player movement rules have sucked some of the fun out of free agency by making it harder to poach difference-makers the old-fashioned way. Increasingly, the way to add top talent is by putting the right pile of assets in front of their incumbent teams.

But the main thing is that right now, this week, those picks are tied to something tangible. Picks are worth more in these few days of the year because they aren’t just vague promises of future value; right now, those picks mean an opportunity to get That Guy. And That Guy is often worth more to one team than another.

Dating back to 2000, there have been 130 first-round picks acquired in draft-adjacent deals. That’s 130 times a team has either moved up in the draft of bought into an extra first-round pick in a deal agreed to on draft night or in the immediate ramp-up to draft night. Those 130 deals should tell us a bit about the market value of draft ranges and the costs associated with buying in or moving up in draft order.

A couple of caveats:

• The research below only includes draft-adjacent deals. Trades for Andrew Wiggins and Rudy Gobert aren’t included because they happened well after the draft and had more to do with the free agency period and star movement. Trades involving future picks (like the 2004 deal that brought Gordon Hayward to the Jazz in 2010) aren’t included because picks have different value as far-off assets than they do right before the draft.
• Every draft has its own thresholds and perceived drop-off points, which is why it’s best to look at the aggregate and ignore (to a certain degree) weird outliers.
• Wherever possible, this research attempts to take into account where salary motivated a certain player’s inclusion, but it’s hard to remember 30 teams’ exact financial situations at every point in the past 23 years.

With that in mind, let’s see what we can learn from 23 years of draft-adjacent trade history — both about the generalities of pick trades and about potential Jazz impact in a draft where Utah owns #9, #16 and #28.

Move-Up Deals

Of the 130 first-round picks acquired in draft-adjacent deals over the past 23 years, 49 involved a team improving their draft position by adding some kind of asset to an existing first-round selection. Let’s start with 24 move-up trades where the highest pick acquired was a lottery selection.

Draft-adjacent move-up trades involving a lotto pick, 2000-2022

Moving up a single spot is cheap enough, which makes sense when you consider the dynamics behind that conversation. For the team right in front of you to be willing to deal with you, they must tacitly let you know that they’re not as interested in your target, so there’s slightly less leverage than if they’re helping you leapfrog a bunch of other teams. Cash or second-rounders have historically been enough to move a single spot.

Beyond that, it’s a little scattershot. Most lottery jumps were 2-6 spots and involved at least one other first-round selection or high-level rotation talent. Even the ones that look funky kind of fall into that basic pattern: the Blazers probably shouldn’t have been able to get from #4 to #2 (AND get a second) just by adding Viktor Khryapa to the deal, but on the other hand, Khryapa was a recent first-rounder himself coming off of a 21-mpg season and still on a rookie deal. That’s kind of like adding a 1st to the deal, if the team on the other end of the phone believes in that guy.

The bigger jumps get a little more eye-of-the-beholder. Nobody made a bigger jump into the lottery than the 2017 Jazz getting from #24 to #13, and reserve big man (also still on a rookie deal) Trey Lyles was the only skid-greaser. For the 2010 Thunder, a late first and a willingness to absorb an aging “Mo Pete” (he’d play four more NBA games after that trade) were enough to move 10 spots from #21 to #11, because the Hornets were trying to make moves to be more competitive.

Move-up trades outside the lottery were a bit more flexible: second-rounders are usually enough to get it done, or at the most it was a heavily protected 1st or a rotation-level talent that helped a team slide forward.

Draft-adjacent move-up trades outside the lotto, 2000-2022

Jazz impact. If the Jazz are interested in moving up from #9 or even #16, doing so should be fairly realistic given the sheer quantity of surplus picks. On the other hand, if the wanted to move back from #9, history says you’re probably only getting a single extra 1st or something of equivalent value. It also might not require a ton to move up from #28 if someone they like slips into the 20s, or they could potentially pick up a second themselves by moving back a tad from that spot.

Player trades involving draft-adjacent pick movement

In roughly a third of the trades in this sample, the first-round pick acquired on or around the draft was involved in a trade primarily about players.

Here are the lottery examples:

Player-focused lotto trades conducted around the draft, 2000-2022

Some of those are technically also move-up trades, but we’ll list them down here instead. If a team trades a lottery pick for, say, All-Star Jimmy Butler and a mid first-rounder, their primary target probably wasn’t the pick.

With few exceptions, getting into the lottery with a trade centered around a player means you had better be giving up a star (higher in the lottery) or at least a starter-level talent (in the back of the lottery). Some of these — like the Memphis deal for #10 Ziaire Williams — were part of such a large multi-player trade that it’s hard to untangle the exact value of each asset, but you still see the general rule in play here. Teams don’t generally give up lottery picks for role players.

Just outside the lottery, you’re still usually looking at starters or high-end reserves to acquire a pick, but as you move deeper into the draft, it’s not uncommon to see picks in the 20s moved for a rotational guy, or used to even the value in a trade involving similarly tiered players on both ends — like when LA and OKC swapped starting guards in 2020.

Player-focused draft pick trades outside the lottery, 2000-2022

Jermaine O’Neal was only one season removed from a run of six straight All-Star appearances when got moved for the #17 pick, but he had missed half a season and was about to decline precipitously. Outside of that exception, it was mostly solid starters or good/cheap reserves that drew non-lottery firsts.

Jazz impact. That would seem to indicate that the Jazz wouldn’t have to be super lucky to get a non-lotto 1st for the likes of Kelly Olynyk or Jordan Clarkson (were the latter to opt in), but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My intel says the Jazz were not drawing offers of a first for Olynyk at the deadline, and Clarkson’s contractual future is uncertain.

Going the other direction, this history seems to indicate that the Jazz could get a high-level starter for their #9 pick or a solid rotation piece for #16 or #28 — but this is probably the wrong time in their trajectory to be adding win-now pieces instead of taking shots focused a few years out during the long span of team control that comes with rookie contracts.

Picks for other assets

Teams often acquire firsts in draft-adjacent deals using other “stuff,” but if you want to get into the first half of the draft, you had better call with a future 1st as part of your offer. 

Draft-adjacent trades involving future/other assets, 2000-2022

History says that outside of player trades and move-up deals, you need to offer a future 1st or cap relief to get any higher than about #24. From #24 on, you can often find a deal for 2nds and/or cash, like in one famous Jazz deal where they acquired a 3-time All-Star for #46 and some skrillah.

The other takeaway from this research is how those trades for future 1sts often go badly for the “seller.” In two thirds of the cases where a future pick was the primary haul, that future asset wound up being the same or worse in terms of draft position.

It will be interesting to see how new salary cap realities impact the trade value of late firsts. Teams used to sell these off pretty readily (or use them to stash international projects) because of the guaranteed salary attached to even late first-rounders. But as it gets even more important to find cheap ways to fill out a roster, taking a shot there might be increasingly viewed as worth the risk. In six of the past nine drafts, no team has traded a 26-30 pick immediately around draft night.

Jazz impact. It’s highly unlikely that the Jazz trade #9 or #16 just for a future first.

There are some interesting questions about #28. The Jazz will ostensibly bring back three second-year players next year, so rostering another three rookies might overload their player development coaches in a way that is worth thinking twice about.

Getting some seconds might not be a bad option here. I’ve heard that the Jazz might like to grab some seconds in years when they own other teams’ picks, because it means they can throw protections on them the way the Lakers did with their own 2027 pick traded to the Jazz. If for example they owned a second in 2025, they could trade the better of Cleveland/Minnesota that year while adding insurance should one of those picks wind up in the top four. That would still be a pretty valuable asset if the Jazz find themselves bidding for a star at some point.

Draft picks are a strange currency, and never more so than this particular week. The Jazz have picks in multiple different draft ranges, so they can sniff around a lot of options in terms of trading up, down, out or potentially even in if they feel a need to pounce because a guy is there.

When that happens, this is a handy guide for what value you might reasonably expect to see on both sides of a trade involving a first-round pick.