More than 100 basketball players declared for the 2023 WNBA draft, but only 36 players will hear their name called during the main event Monday.
The league invited 15 players to attend the draft in New York, including Aliyah Boston, Haley Jones and national champion Alexis Morris, according to a press release from the WNBA.
Fans hoping to watch Iowa’s Caitlin Clark get drafted will have to wait until next year. She’s not eligible to be drafted in 2023, since a player has to turn 22 during the calendar year of the draft, and Clark turned 21 in January.
While the WNBA draft gets players one step closer to achieving their professional dreams, getting drafted doesn’t secure a player’s spot on a WNBA roster.
There are only 144 roster spots in the WNBA, and, of the 36 picks made last year during the 2022 draft, only 17 made opening day rosters, according to Just Women’s Sports.
How to watch the WNBA draft
The draft starts at 5 p.m. MDT and will be televised on ESPN. It can be streamed on the ESPN website and the ESPN app, according to USA Today.
What is the order of the first round of the 2023 WNBA?
The draft is broken down into three rounds, each consisting of 12 picks. Only seven of the league’s 12 teams have a pick in the first round this year.
The Indiana Fever, who own the first pick, also have pick No. 7 in the first round. In 2022, they became the first team to make four picks in the first round, according to the WNBA’s press release.
The Dallas Wings have the most picks in the first round with three.
The order of the first round is as follows:
- Indiana Fever
- Minnesota Lynx
- Dallas Wings
- Washington Mystics
- Dallas Wings
- Atlanta Dream
- Indiana Fever
- Atlanta Dream
- Seattle Storm
- Los Angeles Sparks
- Dallas Wings
- Minnesota Lynx
Who will be the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft?
South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston is the favorite to be taken first in the 2023 WNBA draft. This season, Boston was named the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year for the second consecutive year.
She helped South Carolina win the NCAA women’s championship last year and this season led the Gamecocks to the Final Four, where they fell to Iowa.
“Aliyah Boston is convincingly the best player in this class, a future defensive stalwart who has wonderful touch and patience as a scorer in the post,” The Athletic’s Sabreena Merchant wrote. “The knock on Boston this season has been the decline in her boxscore stats, but that’s mostly a function of South Carolina’s deep rotation and Kamilla Cardoso’s emergence as a dominant backup big.”
Merchant noted that Boston recently made her debut with the USA Basketball’s senior team and proved she could already compete with the WNBA’s best.