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The 2021 NBA draft is just around the corner, with the likes of Turkey’s Alperen Sengun, Oklahama State’s Cade Cunningham and G League Ignite’s Jalen Green some of the top prospects expected to be early picks. It is a known fact that quite a few teams end up trading their draft picks for immediate improvement, with the NBA draft day generally seeing a range of moves happening every year.
The NBA also has the “seven-year rule” which prohibits teams from trading their draft picks more than seven years in advance for immediate improvement in the form of established stars. Regardless, most draft pick trades nowadays come with a “pick-protection” clause, allowing teams to keep a hold of their draft picks if they land high enough. In this article, we look at the overall meaning of a protected draft pick in the NBA:
2021 NBA draft: What is a protected draft pick?
As mentioned above, teams are free to trade their draft picks if they find themselves in situations where they are more in need of immediate improvement. If a championship contender thinks that they only need to add established players for the time being, they can trade away future draft picks. However, these trades come with a pick-protection clause that allows teams to keep hold of their picks if they land high enough.
What it means is that NBA teams who have some kind of a protection clause (top-10, lottery-protected etc.) will be able to keep them if they fall under the conditions of the clause. For example, if team A trades a draft pick which is top-10 protected, a no. 1-10 pick would mean that team A gets to keep hold of their draft pick. In every other case, it is team B that will be able to use the pick to add a rookie to their roster.
Additionally, in such a scenario where team A is able to keep hold of a traded pick that is protected, team B will get the team A’s next year’s draft pick. Hence, protected picks carry more value than unprotected picks as the original team can keep hold of their pick in case it is high
Finally, the seven-year rule prohibits teams from trading away picks that are more than seven years away in the future. The rule was brought in to protect teams from misuse of their draft picks and protecting future owners’ from decisions made by current ones.
