Origins of major sports drafts

THE DRAFT is a relatively recent addition to most major sports, allowing teams to choose from the best up-and-coming players in the hopes that the worst teams will have the greatest chance to improve. These are the histories and experiences of the four major professional leagues:

Football's draft dates to 1936, after then-Eagles owner Bert Bell argued within the sport for an alternative to the waiver system created in 1934. Bell contended that the league needed a way to ensure competitive balance - that the worst team in the league would have the best chance to improve by selecting the best available college talent. The waiver system favored those teams that could afford to pay top money for players, leaving teams like Bell's Eagles at a disadvantage.

On May 19, 1935, the NFL's club owners gathered in Philadelphia and instituted the first player draft. The Eagles selected Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger with the first pick, but he didn't sign an NFL contract, instead pursuing a career outside football.

The NFL and AFL merged in June 1966, and held the first combined draft the following March. In 1994, the draft moved to the current seven-round format.

The NBA draft originated in 1947, only one year after the NBA was founded by a group of stadium owners. There is no clear reason why the NBA instituted a draft, but in its earliest years, the league's teams would pick players solely within their geographic region.

Perhaps the more conspicuous aspect of the NBA draft is its lottery, which began in 1985 as a means to determine the draft order of teams that didn't make the playoffs. Speculation abounds that the lottery was instituted to protect the league's integrity after several teams vied for the worst record in the 1983-84 season. Their goal: to get the first pick in a 1984 draft class featuring Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley, taken fifth by the Sixers.

The lottery has undergone changes in the years since, most notably a weighted system that gave the team with the worst record the best chance to win the top pick.

Over the past several years, the Sixers, led by former general manager Sam Hinkie, began "The Process," by which the team sold off its veteran players and lost games in an attempt to get the top pick and start from scratch with the leading college prospects.

"The Process" may have finally paid off: The Sixers own the first, 24th and 26th picks in the June 23 NBA draft.

In 1963, the NHL established the amateur draft to solve a nagging issue in the league: sponsorships. The NHL's clubs sponsored junior teams, and thus gained exclusive rights to sign any player on those teams. The sponsorship system wasn't completely eradicated until 1969.

Then, in 1995, the league introduced a draft lottery. Like the NBA's, the NHL lottery determines the draft order for the 14 non-playoff teams. Originally only one drawing was held - to determine the first pick - but in 2015, a minor tanking scandal broke out when the Buffalo Sabres supposedly torched their season hoping to grab a top player. Perhaps responding to that incident, the NHL revised the lottery this year to determine the first three picks in the draft via three different drawings.

It was the old system in 2007 that worked against the Flyers just after the end of a rough season in which they went 22-48-12 . The Flyers easily had the worst record, but the Chicago Blackhawks won the lottery and drafted Patrick Kane. In 2010, Kanescored the Stanley Cupwinning, overtime goal against the Flyers at, of all places, the Wells Fargo Center. ESPN listed the Flyers' misfortune as the most severe lottery setback ever.

The MLB draft in its current form began in 1965 and, like the NFL's, was a response to economic disparity between its clubs. Specifically, the league sought to curtail the paying out of generous bonuses - some larger than MLB salaries - to amateurs. The draft lasts 40 rounds, far longer than that of any other major sport.

In 2011, MLB introduced the Competitive Balance Lottery, which assigns supplementary draft picks to teams in the 10 smallest markets or which have the 10 lowest revenues. The extra picks add money to those teams' signing bonus pools, another feature of the draft.

The Phillies were front and center in the 1997 draft when, after taking J.D. Drew with the second overall pick, negotiations over his bonus soured and he elected to play independent ball. Aside from the well-documented frustration this caused Phillies fans, it had another consequence: In 1998, Drew was redrafted and signed with the Cardinals. The Phillies, with the first pick, took Pat Burrell. Both Drew and Burrell won the World Series; Drew in 2007 with the Red Sox and Burrell in '08 with the Phillies.

@maxgrettig