NBA Draft’s second round, once a fun party, lost its weirdo charm by getting its own night

The second round of the NBA Draft used to be fun.

It used to be a good time. It used to be something.

Then, in 2024, the league gave the second round its own night. It turned it into an event. It got a glow up.

And … lost what made it special.

The second round used to have the energy of a bar at the end of the night. Now it feels as if you’re having a few NA beers while visiting the in-laws.

No juice. No crowd. No vibes.

Admittedly, this is an esoteric thing. The NBA Draft isn’t the NFL Draft, where the second round matters. It’s more of a crapshoot. Most of the time, people haven’t even heard of the players being taken. Most of them won’t make it. Some of them won’t even make it to the G League because they’re draft stashes planning on a career overseas.

But that doesn’t matter! The second round was for the diehards.

Back in the before times — so, like, 2023 — it was for the people who stayed. The first round ended. NBA commissioner Adam Silver stepped off the stage and gave way to deputy commissioner Mark Tatum. Silver got to read off the fun names — the No. 1 pick, the lottery selections. Tatum was calling out the guys playing in Europe with little chance of making it to the NBA, and figuring out how to pronounce Tarik Biberovic when it’s nearing midnight.

That year, Victor Wembanyama was the No. 1 pick. He just played in The NBA Finals. The No. 1 pick of that second round? James Nnaji. Then at Barcelona, he’s since been traded twice and moved to two other European teams. This year, he played at Baylor.

Those are the deep cuts fans loved in the second round. That’s why they stuck around at the Barclays Center. They were the few but the lively. It was a fun party. And if you watched at home, you were invited. It was NBA Twitter for the West Coast games in real life. The first round was a sold-out stadium concert. The second round was Gogol Bordello at The Stone Pony.

(Back when David Stern was still commissioner, the boos from the New York crowd for the boss in the first round would turn to cheers for Silver, then his deputy, in the second. That was its own kind of fun.)

Those vibes changed in 2024. The NBA split the draft into two nights. Nobody was asking for it.

That first year it was in the afternoon. The last two years it has been in Brooklyn but in a makeshift studio on the arena’s concourse. The building is otherwise empty. There are still fans, but there are fewer of them. They’re more polite. They are not weary and buzzed from a long day. They’re golf clapping the night away. Tatum is there, too, but as the emcee for a quaint dinner gathering.

It’s nice for the players who are there. They get to watch from their own tables. Their families sit alongside them. It’s probably the best night of their life to that point. That’s great.

But as a TV product, it just misses some of that weird pizazz that used to make the second round fun. There were players who appeared out of nowhere and came out from the stands, like Sting (the wrestler, not the former frontman of The Police) lowering down from the rafters. There were the fans in their obscure jerseys. There were the Knicks fans who stayed around after the team made another lottery pick. These are the people who once gave us a Maciej Lampe chant; they deserve to be in the building.

The draft had a flow and a joie de vivre when it was all in one night. It was the mullet of draft experiences. The first round was the business experience at the front, the second was the party in the back. Everyone let their hair down when Tatum took the stage.

This is the night that gave us the memorable moment when Nikola Jokić was drafted in 2014 during a Taco Bell commercial. No one minded at the time. Few knew who he was anyway. We were just living mas. Now, it’s lore.

Maybe it was inevitable that this, too, would change. All good things must end for the sake of efficiency, for revenue, for broadcast inventory, for reasons people don’t care about. Sports has not been spared.

Maybe I’m just another man yelling at a cloud or the one who thinks the past was always better. But it’s the small traditions that can make things beloved.

The second round used to be special. It was smaller, odder and for the ones who stuck with it. Not anymore. So it goes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t missed.