1974 ABA draft

The 1974 ABA draft was the eighth draft done by the American Basketball Association (ABA), a rivaling professional basketball league to the National Basketball Association (NBA) that they would eventually merge as a part of the NBA only a couple of years later despite official merger talks ultimately being dead during the later, more competitive years of the ABA's history due to the ABA being more competitive in stealing away the NBA's talents by this time. Following the mixed results of the previous season's draft period (which saw four different drafts take place for the ABA from the months of January to May 1973), the ABA would end up returning to a more simplified draft process once again, with this year's main draft lasting for only 10 rounds for 100 draft picks instead of 29 overall rounds for 212 total picks. With that in mind, this draft would begin its first two rounds on March 6 that year before finishing the rest of that draft on April 17 out in the league's headquarters in New York. This draft was also the only draft where the ABA made the bold move of utilizing a draft that allowed them to select players that were already on NBA teams in what was dubbed the "ABA Draft of NBA Players" after the actual ABA draft finished things up properly, which confused reporters and fans on what they should make of that specific draft afterward. This draft was notable for the third round selection of Petersburg High School senior Moses Malone from Virginia, who not only became the first high school senior to be selected in a modern-era basketball draft since Reggie Harding in the 1962 NBA draft (albeit as a college preparatory student that couldn't immediately play in the NBA despite his lack of options), but also became such a major success as the first high school senior to play professional basketball to the point of allowing not just another high school senior to be selected in the following year's ABA draft with Bill Willoughby, but also allowed the NBA to select high school players in future years as well (most notably in 1975 for their own draft alongside during the late 1990s and early 2000s as well as high school postgraduate students in the late 2010s). It also became the final draft for the Denver Rockets where they participated under that name before they rebranded themselves into the modern-era Denver Nuggets franchise that we know to this day out in the NBA (thus becoming the final surviving ABA team to rebrand themselves while in the ABA), as well as the final draft for both the Memphis Tams and Carolina Cougars under those respective names with the Tams rebranding themselves to the more popularly named Memphis Sounds and the Cougars moving from the state of North Carolina to St. Louis, Missouri to become the uniquely named Spirits of St. Louis.