The rise of older European players in collegiate basketball has created an interesting draft eligibility question for the NBA to figure out, writes The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov.
As Vorkunov details, a small section of said international NCAA players this year were already 22 years old and therefore automatically eligible for the draft. This led to the question of what would happen should one of those players be selected in the draft but still wish to play in college, which may now meet the NBA’s definition of a professional sport due to recent rulings about player payments from programs.
Vorkunov notes that according to the CBA, a league is professional if it pays players beyond living expenses, which is soon to be the case with the NCAA.
“Playing intercollegiate basketball will be considered under the provisions of Article X, Section 5 of the CBA to be signing a player contract with a non-NBA professional basketball team,” the league said in a memo before the draft.
This ruling would allow those players to become collegiate draft-and-stashes if they chose – in collaboration with the teams that selected them – to remain in school. The team would hold onto the players’ draft rights indefinitely without the player losing collegiate eligibility, similar to a player remaining overseas after being drafted.
However, this matter has not been decided outright. The league and the National Basketball Players Association will need to work together to determine how to handle this new wrinkle.
There are only a few players to whom this currently applies, according to Vorkunov, who cites Mihailo Petrovic (Illinois), Ilias Kamardine (Ole Miss), and Sananda Fru (Louisville) as examples. Currently, such players are allowed to play in college while being considered free agents. This would allow them to leave college mid-season to sign with a team if the opportunity arose, a situation that has not occurred since 2007, when Randolph Morris went left school to sign with the Knicks after having gone undrafted while not signing with an agent two years earlier.
The lack of clarity on the future of these players illustrates the complications of rapidly changing rules governing player payments in the NCAA in regard to how they impact draft eligibility.
Really…..hasn’t changed the game enough?
This would actually be cool especially a system similar to the NHL
They already do this in the NHL, why not in the NBA?
What is this NHL you speak of? Lols. I doubt NBA teams want to risk guys getting hurt who are on the payroll. This CBA is crazy as is. How about offering the best Euro league guys real contracts rather than rookie scale. Or at least tweek that a little to insure the best talent in the world is in the nba. Old man Sabonis comes to mind. Gold medallist and dominated Europe yet a rookie…..highly insulting.
They wouldn’t be on the NBA team’s payroll, just their rights would be owned.
And when they get hurt, traded, waived before playing a game, then what? Just seems like another way for the NBA to completely control young men and ball clubs future to me. I mean the guy bringing an envelope and saying, trust me Mavs got the number 1 pick isn’t hard enough to swallow. Show us the draft process please. Silva is hell bent in controlling absolutely everything. Micromanaging much.
The NBA is controlling anyone’s future. They operate a business and have a set hiring process for new employees. They are a national brand and want to distribute their assets across the entire brand. They make a deal with people that want to play for them to agree to these terms. The competition is so tough to gain employment with the league that only the best of the best make it. Even bench players who don’t play a lot were the best player at their high school and likely best in their state or league. Professional sports teams no longer hold legal monopolies, anyone can form a new league and play in any city.
Nobody is anymore entitled to play in the NBA than they are to work for any other company. If you don’t like the terms, get a job with someone else.
I agree always thought this should be a thing. Especially now that the kids are getting paid. You should be able to get drafted right out of high school, but have to be one year removed to join the MBA which means you go ahead and go to college. And if you’re drafted, you’re not entering the draft next year, you’ve already been drafted. The team owns your rights. It will make players get scouted more and players focus a little bit more on developing. Plus you been drafted and if your not ready the team can say go one more year in college and work ….. Most of those guys are still getting paid and go to college and compete and develop your game. I think most people have a weird understanding on how a player develops someone who played overseas. You don’t really get to develop much on the bench. That’s not how you develop in basketball. You got to be playing and if you’re going to develop things outside of your game, it helps when you’re playing in college and able to work on different sets of your game while not going against grown men who are stronger and bigger than you are.
The whole notion of getting hurt in a game or practicing is the dumbest thing that I’ve ever heard. What happens if a player gets hurt playing pickup basketball? What’s the chances of getting her more and pick up ball than it is in a game? This is why when players don’t play hard in the All-Star game is so stupid because nobody just goes out there and gets hurt and wasn’t most likely going to get hurt anyway. If you’re going to get hurt In college at 19 or 20 years old, you’re definitely going to get hurt in the NBA because the players are bigger, stronger and there’s more wear and tear on your body. And if you don’t think that college programs have top of the line, rest recovery things in their locker room. This isn’t the 1990s or the early 2000s
The NCAA isn’t about academics anymore Everything now is about ratings and money, money, money.
What could go wrong…