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.