What Detroit Pistons fans should expect from the upcoming virtual draft

With the NBA draft approaching, Detroit Pistons fans may be worried about how it will look virtually. The WNBA and NFL drafts show us there should be much to worry about.

In every sport, the draft is one of the most magical and anticipated moments of the season. No matter what team you root for, whether it’s a team that is in a full rebuild (like the Detroit Pistons) or on the verge of winning a championship, the drat instills hope in almost every fan.

In the NBA, every fan has their eye on a second player who can be a steal. For Pistons fans, this year’s draft can be the one where the team finds someone who can help turn the struggling franchise around.

However, the drafts that are taking place this year are very different from what we all have been accustomed to. Rather than seeing commissioners shake hands with all of the top prospects in their respective sports, everyone is in their home surrounded by family.

So that begs the question: what should NBA fans expect from the draft after watching how the WNBA and NFL drafts fared virtually?

Before the WNBA drafted last week, sports fans were skeptical of how the draft would look while being all online. In Sports Illustrated writer Elizabeth Swinton’s article How the WNBA made the first virtual draft a reality, she lays out how the WNBA shook off that fear as well as set the precedent for the virtual drafts.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert wanted to make a way for the draft to still feel like a momentous achievement for all of the draft participants and did just that.

Each top prospect received a gift box from Engelbert that as Swinton detailed “included WNBA swag, hats to wear from each of the 12 teams upon being drafted and a personalized message from Engelbert”.

After only around three weeks to prepare for the virtual draft, there were very few issues with streams and connections. After all three rounds concluded, the WNBA draft was a virtual experience that was completed without any major glitches or hacks.

But in all reality, we must point out the obvious with the WNBA: they don’t have a large fan base in comparison to the NFL or any other major sports league. Even with the WNBA draft increasing viewership by 123% from last year, they still only averaged 390,000 viewers.

The first round of the NFL draft telecast on Thursday night averaged 15.6 million total viewers, shattering their pervious record. To put that in perspective, that’s 40 times the number of viewers when you put the NFL and WNBA draft in comparison.

This is important because it opens the possibility of more technical issues as well as people who may want to hack into the draft.

ESPN reporter Adam Schefter even reported that the NFL’s test run did not get past the first pick without a technical glitch. On top of that, Dianna Russini said that multiples coaches and GM’s were saying that the bandwidth and communication was a problem.

This worried many NFL fans about what the NFL draft would look like.

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But, as many saw last night, that was not the case. Despite the fact that Thursday night’s first-round was just not the same without one of the greatest traditions where the fan’s parade Rodger Goodell with boo’s, the first round passed by without there being any technical issues.

On the technology front, the NFL joined the WNBA is successfully avoiding any major technical issues.

However, Goodell was very weird throughout the whole telecast. As much as there was a void when it comes to there being no fans booing him, it felt like having the fans boo on his television was forced and not well done.

I don’t think the NBA will have that issue since Adam Silver should learn from his mistakes and improve the presentation. But overall, the NFL was also a smashing success.

With the success from both the WNBA and NFL, NBA fans should take a deep sigh a relief when it comes to worries about their draft coverage. The NBA draft can essentially be a combination of these two league’s drafts.

On the one hand, the NBA can learn a lot from the WNBA draft since the basketball drafts can be run in a very identical way. But on the flip side, the NBA is almost as big as the NFL. They should look at the NFL draft and learn how they got through one of the biggest nights in football.

The NBA draft is a franchise-altering event for many teams. The NBA draft is still at least a few months away, but NBA fans should not be worried about how the draft will look at all.