The Toronto Raptors had been in possession of the 2019 N.B.A. championship trophy for only a few days before the hoop fanatics among us mopped up the Moët, swept away the confetti, and looked to the future. After we studied the grim MRI results—Kevin Durant’s ruptured Achilles, Klay Thompson’s torn A.C.L.­­—it dawned on us that the era defined by the Golden State Warriors could be facing its senescence. What would the new era look like? So much would depend on draft night.

The intensity and the granularity of speculation that led up to the draft ceremony, at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, on Thursday night, had no limit. “Is ‘Space Jam 2’ a Way for LeBron James and the Lakers to Get Around Their Salary Cap Troubles?” one headline in the Ringer read. Another asked, “How many Mega Bemax players will be drafted this year?” Mega Bemax is not a new ginormo-screen movie theatre; it is a leading team in the Adriatic League. Its jerseys are the shade of pink that Diana Vreeland once called “the navy blue of India.”

To teams, agencies, and shoe companies, Zion Williamson, the top pick in the draft, represents gobs of money. During one nationally televised game, Williamson planted his foot with so much force that he ripped apart one of his size-15 Nikes. The next day, Nike’s stock lost a billion dollars in value.

Basketball executives both hunger for and dread the draft: it can mean salvation or shame. The city of Portland will not soon forgive the Trail Blazers brain trust that, in 1984, passed on Michael Jordan and selected . . . Sam Bowie. A lithe center from the University of Kentucky, Bowie had missed two college seasons owing to a stress fracture in his left shin, and he later recalled the Trail Blazers’ doctors taking a little mallet to his tibia: “ ‘I don’t feel anything,’ I would tell them. But, deep down inside, it was hurting.” In his second season in Portland, Bowie broke his left leg. In his third, his right. Sports Illustrated declared him the biggest bust in the history of the draft.

This year, the New Orleans Pelicans were surpassingly miserable on the court and lucky in the lottery. Given the first pick, the team went for Zion Williamson, who recently finished his freshman season at Duke, and who described his titanic dunks to The New Yorker’s Zach Helfand as ethereal, like “you’re floating above the clouds.”