# NBA Draft Capital Intelligence

> Decision-support view of NBA draft capital, pick protections, lottery position, and cap-tier constraints across all 30 teams. Tracks every pick obligation for 2026–2032 with explicit protection clauses, swap conditions, and post-lottery resolutions sourced from NBA.com.

## About

This site is a single-page React application that lets analysts, journalists, agents, and front-office staff explore draft-pick ownership and obligations across the NBA. For each team, the app surfaces:

- Every owned and owed-out pick from 2026 through 2032
- Protection clauses on conditional picks (top-N, slot-range, year-rolling)
- The Stepien Rule (consecutive-year first-round trade prohibition) per team
- Cap tier and apron position
- Final 2026 lottery position with pre-lottery seed comparison
- Linked-pick chains where one team's outcome resolves another's destination

Built and maintained by Mosie Hackett. Site URL: https://nba.mosiealong.com

## Source-of-truth policy

- **NBA.com 2026 Draft Order** (post-lottery PDF release) — authoritative for resolved picks 1–60 after the May 10, 2026 drawing
- **Team and league press releases** — authoritative for trade transactions at the moment of announcement
- **RealGM, Tankathon, Spotrac, HoopsHype, ESPN Trade Tracker** — reference-only aggregators; never source of truth
- All entries are manually verified before being applied to the canonical dataset

## Data endpoints

- https://nba.mosiealong.com/all_teams_draft_picks.json — every pick obligation per team, with protections, current holder, original team, condition, and source notes
- https://nba.mosiealong.com/season_data.json — current NBA standings (auto-updated daily from ESPN)
- https://nba.mosiealong.com/llms-full.txt — verbose summary of the data model and pick obligations for agent ingestion

## Key concepts

- **Stepien Rule** — NBA prohibition on a team trading first-round picks in consecutive years. Named for former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien (1980–83) whose trades depleted Cleveland's draft capital. When a team has already traded one year's pick, the adjacent years are "Stepien-locked."
- **Protection clause** — a condition that determines whether an owed pick conveys or rolls over. Common forms: top-N protected (e.g., top-5: pick conveys if it lands #6 or later), slot-range protected (e.g., picks 4–14), lottery-protected (top-14).
- **Swap right** — the right of one team to swap pick slots with another (or pick the better of multiple picks). Resolves on draft night against actual lottery / record positions.
- **Pool conveyance** — multi-team conditional structures (e.g., "more favorable of OKC/LAC/HOU goes to OKC") that resolve based on the final pick numbers.

## Key pages

- [Landing](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — team-selector grid
- [Team Dossier](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — full draft + cap + lottery picture for one team (`?team=DEN` etc., team selection client-side)
- [2026 Draft Order](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — full 60-pick order resolved post-lottery
- [Lottery Reform](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — proposed alternative formats under consideration for 2027+
- [Cap Situations](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — apron / luxury-tax position across the league
- [League Balance](https://nba.mosiealong.com) — comparative draft-capital view across all 30 teams

## Maintainer

Mosie Hackett · https://mosiealong.com · moshackett@icloud.com

## License / use

Copyright © 2026 Mosie Hackett. All Rights Reserved.

Citation appreciated. Use of the data for journalism, analysis, fantasy, and personal projects is welcome. Wholesale republication of the dataset without attribution is not permitted.