The NBA has elected to cancel its Global Camp for 2019, reports ESPN’s Jonathan Givony. The event, a showcase for draft-eligible prospects outside of America, had been set to take place in Monaco from May 30 to June 2.
“We have cancelled the NBA Global Camp 2019 due to logistical issues and other contributing factors that jeopardized our ability to successfully conduct the camp,” NBA executive VP of basketball operations Kiki VanDeWeghe told ESPN in a statement. “The camp will return in the future.”
For many years, NBA teams scouted international prospects at the Adidas EuroCamp each spring, but than event was abandoned by Adidas in the wake of the FBI’s investigation into college basketball corruption. The NBA assumed control of the spring showcase in 2018, spinning it off into the newly-created Global Camp. However, the camp – which is essentially a draft combine for international prospects, as Givony explains – ran for just one year before running into problems in 2019.
Sources tell Givony that confusion over which venues organizers of the event had actually booked was one key reason for the event’s cancellation. The Global Camp was supposed to take place at the home arena of international club AS Monaco Basket, but the team said it had not been consulted about the availability of its arena, Givony writes.
As our list shows, this year’s group of early entrants features 59 international prospects, and Givony has heard from agents that many of those players only entered the draft pool in the hopes of being selected to participate in the Global Camp. With the event no longer taking place and the withdrawal deadline for early entrants set for June 10, that list of international prospects on the early entry list figures to dwindle significantly in the coming weeks.