Why the NFL cannot follow the NBA's draft timing model
The NFL does the draft process quite differently, of course. There were over 10 weeks between the Super Bowl in early February and the NFL Draft in late April in 2025, the customary timeframe for each. Critics of the NFL and its prolonged draft process point to the NBA as a shining example of how much superfluous time goes by in those 10-plus weeks.
While that's true, it's not so simple. For starters, the NBA season is far longer than the NFL. Tipoff for the last NBA season began back on October 22nd and ran through June 22nd, exactly eight months later. That's three full months longer than the NFL's time between Week 1 and the Super Bowl. The NBA necessarily has to speed into the draft to get the teams ready for the next season.
The players drafted into the NBA this week report to Las Vegas for the summer league in a little over a week, with the exhibition season running from July 10th through the 20th. These aren't unpadded walkthroughs focused on teaching and acclimation like the NFL rookies get in minicamp and OTAs; NBA Summer League games are real basketball, full-speed and full-contact competitions.
Basketball can do that because, well, it's basketball. It's an inherently simpler game than football, with five guys on the floor doing the same basic things they've been doing since they were 6-year-olds in rec leagues. The NFL — perhaps unnecessarily — is a different form of football than even the highest-level college game. Divergent rules about defensive contact, multiple formations and personnel groupings for the 11 men on both sides of the ball, and intensely specialized coaching for every individual position group to elevate skills and strategies from the college game require considerable time and training in the NFL.
The NBA Draft process eschews the pro day circuit and the postseason all-star exhibitions that serve as de facto scouting functions. There is an NBA Scouting Combine in Chicago, which took place over a week in mid-May this year. You might have missed that as an ardent NFL fan, as it took place during the rookie minicamps or early OTAs a couple of weeks following the NFL Draft. Unless you're glued to NBA TV or Sirius XM NBA Radio, you're unlikely to ever hear it mentioned. By contrast, all the major networks, sports or otherwise, base their operations in Indianapolis in the final week of February for the annual NFL Scouting Combine.
In short, the NBA's longer season, abbreviated offseason and comparatively simpler and smaller gameplay afford that league the ability to jump straight from the finals to the draft. The NFL could certainly shave a couple of weeks off between the Super Bowl and the draft, no doubt. But the NFL Draft is its own entity, a profitable offshoot of the league itself that the league happily facilitates and benefits from. That's not going away, nor is the NFL's (perhaps unnecessary) quest to dominate the sports news cycle even in the depths of its offseason.
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