SlamBall Draft spreads star power across eight teams in relaunch season

Bryce Moragne went first overall to the Lava, and that single pick helped set the tone for a draft built to distribute star power across every corner of SlamBall’s relaunch season. By the time the league held its draft on June 28, 2023, it had already unveiled all eight team names, logos, coaches and seven-man rosters the day before, turning the exercise into a final step in shaping a league-wide reset rather than a mere player allocation process.

The first round gave every franchise an instant identity. The Lava opened with Moragne, the Buzzsaw answered with Tyquan Scott, the Rumble landed Bakari Copeland, the Mob chose Cameron Horton, the Wrath grabbed Christian Gray, the Slashers added Amir Smith, the Ozone picked Bryan Bell-Anderson and the Gryphons closed the round with Justin Holmes. That spread reflected how SlamBall wanted the 2023 season to look from the start: a league of recognizable headliners, not one or two loaded rosters separated from the field.

The middle rounds filled in the edges of that picture. The Gryphons added Connor Hollenbeck and KyShawn Jones, the Ozone took Keith McGee and Vincent Boumann, the Slashers brought in Bradley Laubacher and Alonzo Scott, the Wrath stocked up with Ty McGee and Trey Landers, and the Mob landed Darius Clark and Gage Smith. By then, the draft had moved beyond pure name recognition and into roster design, mixing dunkers, defenders and crossover athletes into lineups that could survive on trampolines and still give each club a distinct look.

That balance mattered because the 2023 relaunch was built as a real season, not a nostalgia stunt. SlamBall opened training camp on June 5, launched the season July 21 at Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas and set a month-long schedule with playoffs, all under an exclusive two-year broadcast partnership with ESPN for 2023 and 2024. ESPN said the summer package would include more than 30 hours of live programming across five weekends, giving the league a national platform as it tried to reestablish itself in the sports mainstream.

The season ended with the Mob unbeaten and holding the Gordon/Tollin Trophy on August 17, a result that suggested the draft had created competitive balance even as it concentrated attention on a few obvious names. Moragne finished his opening loss for the Lava with 23 points, while Darius Clark emerged as one of the season’s early scoring forces. Mason Gordon called the talent pool “the best talent we have had in the sport’s history,” and the draft made that claim feel less like promotion than a map of how SlamBall wanted its comeback to work.