Oklahoma City lands Ryan Conwell at 37; Clippers take Baba Miller at 36 in NBA Draft's second round

The 2026 NBA Draft's second round produced two picks in the space of six minutes late on Wednesday night, with the Los Angeles Clippers taking forward Baba Miller at 36 and the Oklahoma City Thunder selecting guard Ryan Conwell at 37. Both selections, transmitted live by the NBA Live wire channel and broadcast on ESPN, fit a familiar late-first-round pattern: teams in the second round are picking for fit, depth, and developmental upside rather than immediate rotation minutes.

The two selections, made in a narrow window between 00:54 UTC and 01:00 UTC on 25 June 2026, are minor events in isolation. Read together, they illustrate how a champion-in-waiting and a rebuilder approach the margins of a roster differently — and how much the second round has come to function as a futures market for controllable, cost-controlled young talent.

The Thunder take Conwell at 37

Oklahoma City entered the night holding a deep, youthful core that took the franchise to the upper tier of the Western Conference. Taking Conwell, a college scorer with positional size, gives the Thunder a swing-and-miss pick they can stash in the G League or carry on a two-way deal without disrupting the existing rotation. The wire copy is spare — the NBA Live channel reports only the selection and the broadcast partner — but the logic is consistent with how the Thunder have built under general manager Sam Presti: every late pick is treated as a call option on upside, not as a roster obligation.

For a team that already pays a top-of-the-league tax bill, the calculus is straightforward. A second-round rookie is the cheapest possible bet on a young player's development. The cost of being wrong is functionally zero. The cost of being right, on a rookie scale contract, is a rotation-calibre contributor for four seasons.

The Clippers take Miller at 36

One pick earlier, the Clippers used the 36th selection on Baba Miller, a versatile forward whose defensive profile has long made him a projected second-round name. For a Los Angeles roster still tilting toward veteran short-termism, the Miller pick is a small but notable tilt toward athletic ceiling. The Clippers' front office, working under president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, has been steadily accumulating younger perimeter pieces around the existing core; a 6-foot-10 forward who can switch across positions fits that brief without requiring a starting role.

The Clippers' selection also speaks to a wider reality of the modern second round: the international and high-major college pool deepens well past pick 30, and front offices that have done their homework on the 36-45 range routinely find rotation pieces there. The economics are stark. A second-round pick signed to a standard contract is paid a fraction of a first-round slot's compensation, and the club retains the player's rights for the same controllable window.

What the second round is actually for

The NBA's two-round structure has been compressed by the rise of the two-way contract and by a player-development infrastructure that now stretches from Santa Cruz to the G League Elite Camp. The second round is no longer a place where teams throw darts in the dark; it is a deliberate market for marginal talent with a longer fuse. Oklahoma City and the Clippers, with sharply different timelines, are both using the same instrument.

There is a countervailing view, worth taking seriously: that second-round picks convert to rotation players at a low rate, and that the league's two-round draft is effectively a 45-person exercise in optionality rather than team-building. On the evidence of the last several drafts, that view is closer to correct than not — only a small share of second-rounders from any given class become meaningful contributors, and most selections are waived, traded, or consumed by G League minutes within two seasons. The expected value of pick 36 or 37 is modest; the variance, however, is the point.

Stakes and what to watch

For Conwell, the practical question is whether the Thunder give him a Summer League invitation and a real developmental runway, or whether the pick functions as a trade chip in a future deal. For Miller, the same question applies one pick earlier. Summer League rosters in Las Vegas and California, beginning in early July 2026, will be the first concrete signal of where each player sits in his new organisation's plans.

The sources reviewed for this piece do not specify either player's college program of origin, contract terms, or pre-draft workouts. Readers looking for scouting detail beyond the basic pick announcement will need to wait for the league's official transaction wire and for team beat reporters to fill in the gaps in the days ahead.

Desk note: Monexus's coverage of the 2026 NBA Draft second round is restricted to what the live wire reported on 25 June 2026; we will update with scouting detail and contract terms as primary sources confirm them.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/s/NBALive
• https://t.me/s/NBALive
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_NBA_draft
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-way_contract