Allowing players with less than 16 champs accept draft picks

I have to say that the reason that i found this out was due to my friend who is lvl 10 and just started to play league. He loves it but due to poor internet connections at our home he got leaver bustered. The issue with that is when we signed on to play a game I made it with draft as i always do. The client allowed all 5 of us to log into the game lobby as well as start the timer for the leaver buster. of course we waited out the 10 mins patiently, only to be heavily disappointing by the fact that he couldn't play draft regardless. This means that we had to do another queue and when we had to wait for another 10 mins we just decided to leave it. I don't understand why the timer would start even if he cannot play the game mode. we don't mind waiting just not for a silly mistake like that.