What if the 1996 NBA Draft happened again? Redraft the legendary class featuring Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Steve Nash, Ray Allen and Ben Wallace.
How the 1996 draft really went, pick by pick through the first round.
The first round of the actual 1996 NBA draft: pick number, player and the team that drafted him.
The same picks, re-made with hindsight — and how far each player moves from where he actually went.
The first round of a 1996 NBA redraft: pick number, player, the team holding that pick, and where he actually went.
Up 12 placesUp 13 placesDown 2 placesUp 1 place
UndraftedUp 11 placesUp 7 placesDown 6 placesDown 5 placesDown 7 placesDown 5 placesUp 8 placesUp 11 placesDown 6 placesDown 5 places
Undrafted
Up 27 placesDown 2 placesUp 7 placesDown 13 places
Up 33 places
Up 15 places
Up 7 placesDown 5 places
Up 8 places
UndraftedDown 15 placesDown 19 places
Undrafted
Twelve teams passed on a 17-year-old straight out of Lower Merion, and Charlotte took him at 13 only to trade him to the Lakers for Vlade Divac. He gave the franchise twenty seasons and five titles. No pick in the class is close.
Booed by Suns fans on draft night, traded to Dallas, then let go back to Phoenix — where he won two MVPs and ran the offence that changed how the league plays. The only guard in this class with back-to-back MVPs.
The one pick the 1996 draft got right at the top. Six feet tall and the most relentless scorer of his era, he dragged a 56-win Philadelphia team to the Finals and won an MVP doing it. He only slides here because two players behind him became more.
Milwaukee took him fifth and traded him seven years later. He kept going for another decade, won titles in Boston and Miami, and hit the corner three that saved the 2013 Finals — the most replayed shot anyone in this class ever took.
Nobody called his name in 1996 — all 58 picks came and went. He signed with Washington as a free agent, became the defensive core of a Pistons team that won the 2004 title, and in 2021 became the first undrafted player inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The 76ers had the first pick and took Allen Iverson, which was defensible — he won Rookie of the Year and then an MVP. But Kobe was on the board, and Philadelphia spent the next decade trying to find someone to play beside Iverson. Take Bryant at one and the Lakers never get him for Vlade Divac, which means no three-peat in the form it happened.
The Hornets did draft him at 13 — and traded him to Los Angeles that night for a 28-year-old centre. It is the single most consequential draft-night trade of the era. Charlotte had Glen Rice and Anthony Mason and wanted to win immediately; keeping Bryant would have cost them two or three seasons and bought them twenty.
Phoenix drafted Nash 15th, played him behind Kevin Johnson and Jason Kidd, then traded him to Dallas after two seasons. He came back six years later and immediately won two MVPs in the same building. The Suns got there eventually — but they paid for him twice.
Fifty-eight picks went by. Four-time Defensive Player of the Year, a title, and eventually the Hall of Fame — all available for nothing, to any team willing to take a flyer on an undersized centre from Virginia Union. The 1996 draft's biggest miss was not a pick anyone made; it was the one nobody did.
Hit start and run the first round your way.
Redraft arguments are a staple of NBA Reddit and basketball “pods”, but our NBA redraft tool really tests whether you know “ball”. You have to fill all 30 slots, which means dealing with the awkward middle-of-the-round calls, not just the obvious stars at the top. It’s the difference between saying “they should’ve taken him third” and actually redrafting the entire first round yourself.
An NBA redraft is a tool that lets you redo a past NBA draft class using hindsight instead of pre-draft scouting reports. Instead of guessing who might be good, you're picking based on who actually was good, letting you rebuild the entire first round the way it "should have" gone.
Pick any available draft year, then go through all 30 first-round picks yourself. The redraft tool lets you select any player from that class at each slot, then compares your finished redraft board to the real draft results.
Draft Time Machine's redraft tool covers a wide range of draft years from 1996 to present day. You can jump into recent classes or dig into some of the most talked-about redrafts in NBA history. Check the year selector on the tool for the full list currently available.
Yes and no. The NBA redraft tool is yours to control. Do what you want, build it based on position of need and fit or how a players' careers actually played out rather than how they were originally ranked on draft night.
NBA redraft tools are popular because they turn "hindsight is 20/20" draft debates into something interactive. Instead of just arguing who a team should have picked, you can actually build out the full redraft board yourself and compare it to how others would redraft the same class. You can also test your knowledge of basketball, are you a stats head? Prove it!
Yes, the redraft tool on Draft Time Machine is free to use, pick a year and start redrafting.
Once you've completed a redraft, you can share your board to compare your picks against the actual draft results and see how your redraft stacks up.
