The first round of the 2026 NBA draft was wrapped with lingering frustration for basketball fans. Not about missed picks and overrated selections. For decades, fans have been outraged that NBA rules ruined photographs of the biggest moment of a young athlete’s career. On a night when Adam Silver had a quick cover-up to get over an embarrassing gaffe, the old tradition of the freshly minted NBA players wearing hats of the ‘wrong’ teams is facing a fresh wave of criticism. The commissioner’s subconscious fumble was easily overcome, but basketball purists are done with historic photo ops getting marred.

Adam Silver created a meme-able moment out of an on-stage blunder while announcing the 22nd overall pick in the first round. Stepping up to the podium for the Philadelphia 76ers’ selection, a tongue-tied Silver accidentally butchered a line he’s had to say over 50 times for a decade.

“With the 22nd pick in the 2026 NBA draft, the Philadelphia 70-selectors… the Philadelphia 76ers select Labaron Philon Jr.,” Silver announced.

To his credit, he quickly overcame the slip-up. Most fans laughed it off. Some even said it’s expected after saying variations of the same thing 21 times before. It gave a lighthearted sprinkle to a night that’s usually filled with pressure.

It’s what came after that that was the problem. As ‘tradition’ goes, the crowd boos the Commissioner (strictly a time-honored tradition shared with the NFL that ironically means respect), the player shakes his hand, and they take a picture wearing the hat of the team that picked them. In this case, Labaron Philon wears the 76ers, not 70-selectors, hat as a memory of the day his NBA career began.

After him, Cameron Carr was selected at #24 by the New York Knicks. The only problem, when he picked up the Knicks hat from the pedestal, he had already been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. But his picture won’t show that…

That’s why veteran analysts like Scott Van Pelt and fans have a problem.

Adam Silver is under fire for spoiling draft night with a very fixable tradition

When Cameron Carr was going up to the stage, the big screens showing the reigning NBA champs, the Knicks’ logos, he heard Adam Silver announce he was traded to the Lakers. The whiplash was visible on his face.

For decades, the NBA draft has had this awkward moment. Time and time again, Scott Van Pelt has called them out on it publicly, including tonight.

“I have no idea how many more years I’ll be doing this, but I want to make a solid vow to complain every single year about the single dumbest thing about draft night. ‘Hey, congratulations, you’ve waited your whole life for this moment, and get to share this with family, friends, and the world. Here, can you put on this hat? Yeah, yeah, no, it’s just the wrong team’s hat. It will be the photo you have of this moment for the rest of your life. You, the wrong hat. You know the league doesn’t start here until July. So yeah, just put the hat on.’ Wrong hat. How hard is this to fix?!”

Silver’s ’70-selectors’ gaffe merely set the stage for a much larger, recurring wave of frustration from fans and media members about the league’s draft-day trade mechanics. Unlike other major professional sports leagues, where traded prospects are handled tactfully, the NBA’s rigid timeline forces many newly drafted players to take the stage wearing the branding of a franchise they will never actually play for.

For instance, the NFL doesn’t allow a rookie to be drafted unless they’re on a contract. Hence, they process trades in real-time, allowing a rookie to walk on stage with the correct gear. The NBA doesn’t stipulate a contract for teams to trade their picks on the day of the draft.

It’s a bizarre technicality that permits teams to trade a player’s draft rights immediately but prevents the deal from becoming official until it clears the league office. Because draft-day trades often cannot be officially processed by the league office before a selection is made, rookies find themselves caught in a weird limbo. They are forced to put on the wrong hat, shake the commissioner’s hand, and take what will permanently become the most memorable photograph of their entire lives while sporting an incorrect logo.

That’s how we have Kobe Bryant in the Charlotte Hornets cap shaking David Stern’s hand, even though Lakers GM, Jerry West, had prepared everything to get him to LA. When he joined NBA Twitter (now X), Kobe loved to celebrate the anniversary of his draft selection by reminding the Hornets what they gave away.

The 2018 draft also created this switch-up seared into everyone’s memories. Luka Doncic in an Atlanta Hawks hat and Trae Young in a Dallas Mavericks hat still makes the Internet cringe to this day.

Frustrated fans continue to demand that the NBA either hand out standard, neutral league-branded hats or simply acknowledge the reality of trades like the NFL so players can celebrate their life-changing moment with the correct logo on their heads.

It’s no surprise that Van Pelt is exhausted by the league’s refusal to fix this logistical issue year after year. Until they fix it, the veteran analyst made a solid vow to keep holding the league office accountable until a change is made.