The Agua Caliente Clippers are Participating in a G-League Expansion Draft Today

While an expansion draft sounds complicated, it’s actually quite simple. There are 11 rounds, with four players (the Agua Caliente Clippers, Erie Bayhawks, Memphis Hustle, and Wisconsin Herd are participating) in each round. Here’s how it works:

• The older G-League teams were allowed to protect the rights of nine of their players that they wanted to keep. The rest of them are available to be selected in the expansion draft. If a player isn’t selected, their rights will obviously remain on their original team.
• Only two players can be selected from each team. After that, the rest of them become off limits. This could create an interesting strategical game, as teams might try to block others from picking up players that could help them (theoretically, anyway. I’m not sure that teams will really care that much, and will just try to build their own rosters instead).
• It’s a snake order draft, with the Clippers picking 4th. I can’t see this effecting the proceedings too much, as four teams is such a small size.
• The draft is taking place at 1 PM ET, but will not not be televised or available to watch in any way. The whole thing is taking place over a conference call. The results should start leaking later in the afternoon or evening.
• A team can choose not to make a pick, but doing so would end their draft. Therefore, it’s unlikely any team goes for anything less than the full 11 players (maybe stopping one short).
• The teams will have the drafted players’ rights for the 2017-2018 season and 2018-2019 season.

Just remember, the teams are only drafting the rights to players. Yes, many of them are currently unsigned and will probably join the G-League teams who selected them this season, but they don’t have to. Basically, if they do decide to come over to the G-League in the next two years, they have to sign with the team who drafted them.

There are some relatively big names in this expansion draft, names that are familiar to fans of the NBA over the last decade. Jimmer Fredette, Jordan Crawford, and Nate Robinson are some of the older guys, while younger players include Ricky Ledo and Robert Upshaw, both

For an example of how the snake draft would work and a more in-depth look at some guys who might be drafted in it, check out this article from 2ways10days.

Once the results come out, we will have some more analysis on who exactly the AC Clippers were able to pick up. Good luck to them for their draft!