What is a Disaster Draft?
One of the most bizarre concepts in sports is a disaster draft. It’s macabre to consider; the idea that a professional sports team could lose their entire roster in some gruesome accident and still have to find a way to compete. At the end of the day though, unfortunately sports is a business and disaster drafts act as insurance for owners’ multiple billion dollar investments.
We want to look at what a disaster draft is and how they work across different sports. Then, we will look at some examples with current team data to try to understand how competitive (or uncompetitive) a team drafted in this way would be.
In this article we’ll look specifically at the NFL disaster plan, the NBA disaster draft rulges, and how the MLB catastrophe draft works. We’ll then use the NBA as an example and discuss what the outcome of a disaster draft might look like in 2023.
NBA Disaster Draft
How does the NBA disaster draft work? The NBA actually has some of the simplest rules out there in order to build a new team – a product of the rosters being small. In the NBA, a disaster draft is triggered if 5 or more players from a team’s active roster die or are dismembered.
If this were to happen, each of the other 29 teams gets to protect who they think are their five best players. Then, the team that experienced the catastrophe gets to pick from the remaining sixth men to form their new team.
The only additional rule is that at most one player can be taken from a particular team. This rule makes it so that a particularly deep team won’t lose multiple players.
You would expect this team to contain lots of “sixth man of the year” type players. In the last few years these players were Malcolm Brogdon, Tyler Herro, Jordan Clarkson, and Montrezl Harrell. This team would definitely be bad, but probably not “worst team of all time” bad. It feels similar to the Wizards roster going into the 2023-2024 season.
NBA Example
To get a better feel for the type of team we would get from an NBA disaster draft, we wanted to do a “mock draft” of sorts. First, we need to determine the pool of players from which we’re picking. The table below contains our best guess at each team’s best player who wouldn’t be protected. This is the mock disaster draft field we’re working with.
Malcolm Brogdon | Kenyon Martin Jr. | Kenrich Williams |
|---|---|---|
John Collins | Aaron Nesmith | Gary Harris |
Ben Simmons | Norman Powell | PJ Tucker |
Mason Plumlee | Russell Westbrook | Torrey Craig |
Alex Caruso | Steven Adams | Matisse Thybulle |
Caris LeVert | Max Strus | Malik Monk |
Reggie Bullock | Bobby Portis | Devonte Graham |
Bruce Brown | Jaden McDaniels | Jakob Poeltl |
Killian Hayes | Naji Marshall | Talen Horton-Tucker |
Donte Divincenzo | Immanuel Quickley | Daniel Gafford |
One thing should strike you first. This list is rightfully “meh”. None of these players are franchise players. However, all of these players are good players, household names almost all of them.
If I were picking a team, there are a few names that jump out at me immediately. Malcolm Brogdon won sixth man of the year and probably gets drafted first overall. I think Bruce Brown also gets selected very quickly – he was fantastic during this Nuggets championship run.
After these two, things get a little more interesting at center. I think either Jakob Poeltl or Steven Adams is a great pick. I’ll take the veteran in Steven Adams. For our second big guy, I think you can’t do much better than John Collins.
The last option can go a lot of ways. Caruso is a good player, Divincenszo, Immanuel Quickley, and Russell Westbrook are probably the best overall players. However, because of the need for a small forward I might lean towards Matisee Thybulle and have Divincenzo and Quickley come off the bench.
To summarize, our team is:
- Malcolm Brogdon
- Bruce Brown
- John Collins
- Matisse Thybulle
- Steven Adams
- Donte Divincenzo
- Immanuel Quickley
If you stare at this team long enough, you might be able to convince yourself that they sneak into the playoffs.
The disaster draft in the NBA can lead to some very interesting teams. Let’s see how it works in other sports.
NFL Disaster Plan
The NFL is a considerably more complicated sport than the NBA from a roster building perspective. The NBA only requires 5 players to start and some teams can get away with really only playing 7 guys come crunch time. In the NFL, you need 30+ guys to field a team. More importantly, many different players contribute on individual plays so it truly is important to have players all around. This is captured in the idea of the “credit assignment problem” in the NFL.
In the NBA, a good team can start with just 1 or 2 really great players. In the NFL, you need stars all around the field to have a chance to get somewhere. Most importantly, you need a good quarterback.
Especially in the modern NFL, a team can’t possibly hope to win without an elite QB. The only exception in recent memory is the San Francisco 49ers teams that have been able to make deep playoff runs the last few years with some significant questions at QB.
The problem is this: good quarterbacks are really hard to come by. The quarterback will probably be the first player an NFL team protects because they are too difficult to replace. That means that you’re forced to run your team through a backup QB. Not a good place to start.
But what are the NFL disaster draft rules? How does it work and how is it triggered?
Most of the rules center on whether a quarterback is one of the deceased. As the definitive most important position, it makes sense to change the rules based on this factor. If a team is left without a quarterback on their roster, they get to choose 2 QBs from the other teams’ third stringers.
The selection of third string quarterbacks is pretty appalling. Here is a selected list of the best currently available in 2023:
Matt Barkley | Tim Boyle | Mason Rudolph |
|---|---|---|
Case Keenum | Sam Ehlinger | Malik Willis |
Jake Fromm | Will Grieg | Nathan Peterman |
Sam Darnold | Brett Rypien | Brandon Allen |
Tough selection.
After this, if at least 15 players from a team are lost, the commissioner has the decision whether or not to cancel the remainder of that team’s schedule. If the commissioner decides to do so, the team experiencing the disaster gets:
- The first overall pick in the next draft (presumably drafting a QB)
- To fill out the remainder of their roster by drafting from other team’s rosters after each team protects their top 32 players.
If the commissioner chooses not to cancel their season, then the only thing the team with the disaster gets is preferential waiver right for the remainder of the season – not much at all.
MLB Catastrophe Draft
The other sport we want to talk about is baseball. How does the MLB disaster draft work? Baseball’s rules are probably the most complicated of the disaster draft rules we considered today. Part of the reason for this complexity is that baseball players have very specialized skillsets.
In the NBA, five guys can make a team. In baseball, though not as dramatically as in football, you need players at specific positions to field a team. You need pitchers, catchers, and fielders. The rules for the MLB disaster draft are geared directly towards this requirement.
Every team is required to nominate players available to be drafted. Five players must be nominated. This group of five players must consist of one pitcher, one catcher, one infielder, one outfielder, and one other player.
In this way, the team experiencing the catastrophe should be able to recoup and field a team. A draft like this is induced if a team loses 5 or more players to some catastrophic event.
Final Thoughts
Luckily in the major North American sports included here, the disaster draft provisions have never been invoked. But with near certainty, at some point they will be.
While it is morbid to know such rules exist, it is important to remember that sports are a business as well as an entertainment vector. Sports teams are multi-billion dollar investments whose success depends on the small number of players on the active rosters.
Disaster drafts act as insurance so teams don’t lose significant value due to a single catastrophic event. Let me put it another way. If there weren’t specifications for a disaster draft, teams might take drastic measures on their own. They might fly players on separate planes. They might opt to drive rather than fly. The disaster draft gives ownership the ability to not have to worry about such devastating circumstances.
So while the idea of a disaster draft might just feel like one big “what if”, to professional sports teams it has a real impact on how they operate. For this reason, it is important to know what they are, why they exist, and how they work.
