The NBA made its return official on Thursday, announcing plans and a date for the start of the regular season as well as dates for the Draft Lottery and 2020 NBA Draft. The finality offers teams both included in the regular season and those in the lottery a chance to set their plans moving forward.
For a team like the Golden State Warriors, who set atop the draft lottery, this provides them a chance to assess their options at the top of the draft. According to Anthony Slater of The Athletic, the team has already interviewed both James Wiseman and LaMelo Ball via Zoom.
So the Warriors will get more than a month of needed prep time between the lottery and draft. They've already met with prospects on Zoom, including James Wiseman and LaMelo Ball, I'm told. But expectation is they will be allowed to meet with prospects in person at some point.
— Anthony Slater (@anthonyVslater) June 4, 2020
While the team has interviewed Ball, they remain fairly low on him as a prospect. All signs from the team have indicated that the Warriors aren’t high, ranging from them preferring Anthony Edwards over Ball to simply stating they are not high on the youngest Ball family member. The team is also reportedly more interested in trading down than selecting Ball.
One line of thought, though, could be that the team is sending out all the signals they aren’t interested in taking Ball only to take him on draft night. But it would be a strategy that limits their options on draft night and would drive down the price of a potential trade.
The pre-draft process will further dictate who the Warriors target in the coming months and whether Ball will be the name they call come October.