What if the 2017 NBA Draft happened again? Redraft the class that gave Boston Jayson Tatum at three, Denver Donovan Mitchell at thirteen, and Philadelphia the first pick it used on Markelle Fultz.
How the 2017 draft really went, pick by pick through the first round.
The first round of the actual 2017 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 2017 NBA redraft: pick number, player, the team holding that pick, and where he actually went.
Up 2 placesUp 11 placesUp 11 placesUp 25 placesUp 18 placesDown 1 placeNo changeUp 14 places
Up 34 placesUp 20 places
Up 34 placesUp 7 placesDown 2 placesDown 2 placesUp 12 placesDown 14 placesDown 11 places
Up 33 places
Undrafted
UndraftedDown 11 places
Up 20 placesDown 14 placesDown 23 places
UndraftedDown 11 placesDown 19 placesNo change
Up 17 placesDown 26 places
Boston traded down from first to third, took him anyway, and won a championship with him seven years later. Six All-Star selections and four straight All-NBA First Teams before an Achilles rupture cost him most of 2025-26.
Twelve teams passed and Denver took him at thirteen only to trade him to Utah that night. He has been an All-Star every year since 2020 and is the highest-scoring player this class produced, at better than 25 a game.
Miami took him 14th and built a decade of defence around him. Six All-Defensive teams and three All-Star selections, and still no Defensive Player of the Year — his best finish is third.
The 29th pick, out of Colorado by way of Division II. He has never made an All-Star team and has three All-Defensive selections, a championship and a First Team nod in 2026 — the clearest case in this class for judging a player on what he does rather than what he is called.
A back injury in his last college season pushed him to 23rd. He won a title in Toronto in his second year, led the league in steals in 2022-23, and won a second with New York in 2026 — two rings from a pick in the twenties.
The 76ers traded up from three to one to take Markelle Fultz, sending Boston the pick that became Jayson Tatum. Fultz is 24th in this redraft. It is the rare draft-night trade where both the player and the pick are remembered, and only one of them worked.
The Nuggets made the 13th pick and traded him to Utah the same night. Denver won a championship in 2023 with Nikola Jokic, so it is hard to argue they were wrong — but for five seasons they watched the best scorer of this class play for someone else.
Los Angeles used the second pick on Lonzo Ball, who is 16th in this redraft. Mitchell went eleven picks later. Ball was traded to New Orleans two years on as part of the deal for Anthony Davis, so the pick did eventually buy a title — just not the way anyone intended.
Twenty-eight picks went by before San Antonio took him. He is fourth in this redraft, has a championship and an All-Defensive First Team, and has still never been an All-Star. The draft's biggest miss is not always the player who busts.
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.
