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This list comprises all players drafted by NBA franchises, who have not been subsequently signed by their teams, and whose rights the team still owns. Unless the team relinquishes these rights - which isn't done without both the players agent asking very nicely and the team having no reason not to do so - these rights are held for as long as the player continues to play professionally in leagues other than the NBA. If that seems harsh, that's because it is.

Take Andrei Fetisov, for example. Fetisov was born in January 1972 (you do the maths), and drafted in 1994. He will never, ever, ever join the NBA. But why does Milwaukee continue to holds his rights, when they have no intention of signing him at any point? Well, the answer is that they're using him for his trade value. That probably seems like a stupid statement, given that the draft rights of someone who will never join the league have about as much use as a chocolate teapot. But it's not about the value of the rights per se; it's more of a technical issue.

In trades, both teams have to give up something. What that something is, is up to them. A player, pick, or cash are options. But sometimes, they don't want to (or can't) give those things up. So they have to give up at least something, even if only as a token gesture. That's where these scrubs draft rights become useful. They can act as the "something" given up in a trade. A team can give up the draft rights to a player as their outgoing half of a trade, and add in nothing more if they so wish (or are so able).

That may sound like it's farfetched and would never happen. Yet it does. It's rare, but it does occasionally happen. For example, when Peja Stojakovic left Indiana to sign with New Orleans in July 2006, Indiana asked New Orleans - with a cash incentive to convince New Orleans to help them - to make the transaction a sign-and-trade, rather than an outright signing. The act of doing this garnered Indiana a mahoosive trade exception, which allowed them to promptly acquire Al Harrington, something that they could not previously have done without the trade exception. However, the trade had Indiana giving New Orleans some cash and Stojakovic, but New Orleans not giving out any players or draft picks back to Indiana. (And why would they add any? They're the ones doing Indiana the favour.) This meant that they had to give up something else in the trade, and the thing that they wound up forfeiting were the draft rights to Andy Betts, a beautiful and fantastic Englishman drafted in 1998 who won't play in the NBA. It's not much, but it's 'something'. And that's all that they needed it to be.

Another example, from the 2008 trade deadline, saw the Memphis Grizzlies as the third team in a two team trade between Houston and New Orleans (again). The Rockets traded Mike James and Bonzi Wells to the Hornets for Bobby Jackson, in a move to get Houston under the luxury tax threshold. However, New Orleans welcomed the new players (well, Bonzi, at least), but they needed to give more outgoing salary to make the trade work for them. So they needed to include the minimum salaries of Adam Haluska and Marcus Vinicius. Houston could afford to take back Haluska, but not Vinicius as well, for that would put them back into the tax territory and make the whole move rather pointless for them. In stepped Memphis, who took on the salary cap number of Vinicius to make the trade possible, and who then promptly waived him. However, to take on Vinicius, the rules, as always, said that Memphis had to give up at least something to make the deal work. The 'something' that they chose were the draft rights to Sergei Lishouk, a no-name drafted in 2004 who did not pan out, and who will never join the NBA. Had they not held Lishouk's rights for all of these years, they wouldn't have been able to deal them, and thus they wouldn't be a part of the trade.

(Why Memphis wanted to be in this trade in the first place is a bit baffling, given that they didn't get any cash, players, or a pick for their troubles, and just seem to have taken on someone else's committed salary without getting any incentive to do so. Strange times. Also, note that Memphis actually got back some draft rights, too - since Lishouk was their only player whose unsigned draft rights they held, they asked Houston for a new one back, and got those of Malick Badiane back. Badiane didn't figure to ever join the NBA, but the 0.05% possibility of him doing so was ever so slightly more attractive to Memphis than the 0% certainty of Venson Hamilton - another scrub whose rights Houston owns - ever joining, and so that's why they asked for Badiane's instead. As it happens, Badiane signed for training camp in 2008, and was waived quickly. This bracket is getting longer and even duller so I'll shut up now.)

Very rarely, retaining these rights is worth something. For example, in summer 2007, Washington bagged a first round pick from Memphis for the rights to Juan Carlos Navarro, and San Antonio used the value of Luis Scola's rights to be able to weasel their way under the luxury tax. Sacramento tried to get a first round pick for Dejan Bodiroga back in the early part of this decade, and the Bulls could turn Mario Austin's rights into maybe something of value if they wanted to do so. For the most part, though, these players attatched to these draft rights are bobbins, and thus the value of the rights in trades is used only as a technicality.

To retain these draft rights, all the team has to do is extend them a contract offer by a certain date every season. With the exception of unsigned first round draft choices, of which there are only six, (Frederic Weis, Tiago Splitter Joel Freeland, Petteri Koponen, Serge Ibaka and Fran Vazquez), these offers can be - and in practice, always are - fully unguaranteed one year minimum salary contracts. (In the case of the first rounders, the minimum is 80% of the rookie scale contract for their draft slot that season, with the usual guarantees of any rookie scale contract. Don't try too hard to figure out what the hell I just said, because you'll achieve nothing but boredom.) The players can in theory sign these contracts if they want, but in practice they don't. There's no point. In the case of the truly scrubby players, the NBA franchise will just waive the player before their plane even arrives. As such, these players rights continue to be held by the NBA teams for as long as the player keeps playing in professional leagues other than the NBA. (The teams lose the rights to the players exactly one year to the day after the expiration of the player's most recent professional contract. So if they keep playing, and the team keeps extending the offers, then the player's rights continue to be held.)

It has happened before where such offers are accepted when they aren't supposed to be. It rarely ends well. After the 2006 draft, the Lakers heavily advised their second round draft pick J.R. Pinnock to to go Europe, for there was no way he was going to make the roster that year. They extended the minimum offer of the one year unguaranteed minimum salary contract, but told J.R. not to bother signing it, for it was futile. Pinnock didn't listen, signed the contract, went to camp to battle for his place, lost, got waived, and now his rights - and his ticket back to the NBA one day - are gone forever. The same situation happened in summer 2007 with Demetris Nichols, who went to the Knicks despite them asking him not to, just to get waived. (His story has a happier ending - he was subsequently claimed off waivers, twice, once by Cleveland and once by Chicago, and ended up seeing out the season.) However, sometimes, it's been productive - Chris Duhon signed with the Bulls against their wishes, went to training camp, won his roster spot fair and square (beating out the two rival point guards with guaranteed contracts in Jermaine Jackson and Mike Wilks), and Duhon wound up starting most of the year for them and earning himself a $9.6 million conract. Carl Landry of Houston also got a nice payday after taking the same risk and succeeding. But generally, it's a stupid idea for stupid people, and so it is not common practice to accept these offers.

Now go and do something more exciting.

Draft index  Trades  Unsigned draft picks