NBA Orlando Bubble Fantasy Draft

Next month, 22 NBA teams will head to Orlando to finish the NBA season and crown a champion. For the other eight teams, there seasons are over. While the majority of NBA star power will be down in Florida, notable guys like Steph Curry, Karl-Anthony Towns, D’Angelo Russell, Trae Young, Derrick Rose, and more won’t be making the trip.

With the NBA all about new ideas right now, from play-in tournaments to potentially shifting their calendar for good, the Complex Sports team wanted to present our idea: a fantasy draft where the 22 teams heading to Orlando got to add one player from the teams that didn’t make it. This would secure all the star power would be included and add some real intrigue to the games. Could you imagine Steph Curry joining Bradley Beal on the Wizards for eight games? Chaos. 

Now, this is something that the NBA would never do, and that’s fine. It’s a fantasy draft for a reason. We’re just trying to add some fun to the mix. We broke down the full draft on this weeks episode of the pod, which you can listen to here, but the process was pretty simple. Zion, Adam, and myself alternated picks until we were through the 22 teams. The draft order was done from the worst record of the 22 teams to the best, with the Wizards picking first and the Bucks picking last. You could pick anyone that wasn’t set to play for one of the 22 teams. We also pretended like injuries didn’t exist, so guys like Klay Thompson and Blake Griffin were included in the player pool.