Alec Anigbata Rumors | Hoops Rumors

And-Ones: Expansion, Greenwood, Anigbata, 2020 Draft

June 13th, 2025 at 3:18pm CST by Luke Adams

While NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes the league will “likely” expand beyond its current 30 teams sooner or later, he said during an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show this week that it’s not obvious to him that it absolutely needs to happen in the short term (Twitter video link).

“The reason I say it’s not obvious is because as a global business where something like two billion people will connect with us on social media, over a billion people over the course of the year will watch some portion of the game, adding another U.S. city, it’s unclear how much growth we’ll get as a result of that,” Silver explained, noting that expanding from 30 teams to 32 would dilute the NBA’s talent pool and result in two new partners splitting up the league’s revenue.

“… Having said that,” Silver continued, “I do believe certain markets can potentially be additive to the NBA, and that’s what we’re going to look at. I think part of it is geographic. It’s a big country. Making sure we’re represented all around the country, and then over time, maybe there’s more we can do in Canada, and Mexico City is a city we’ve talked about before.”

Silver went on to say that the NBA hasn’t met with any groups from specific cities yet, but confirmed that expansion will be a real topic of discussion at the league’s Board of Governors meetings in July.

“I don’t mean to tease people with this,” Silver said. “This is the summer we’re going to look at it seriously.”

We have more from around the basketball world:

David Greenwood, a former UCLA star who was the No. 2 overall pick in the 1979 draft behind Magic Johnson, has passed away at age 68 after battling cancer, according to Beth Harris of The Associated Press. Greenwood appeared in over 800 regular season games across 12 NBA seasons with the Bulls, Spurs, Pistons, and Nuggets, earning a spot on the All-Rookie first team in 1980 and winning a title with Detroit in 1990. He held career averages of 10.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 2.0 assists in 28.4 minutes per game.
Ahead of Sunday’s draft withdrawal deadline for early entrants, German forward Alec Anigbata has removed his name from consideration, reports Jon Chepkevich of DraftExpress (Twitter link). The 20-year-old has played a minor role for Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany this season and will become automatically draft-eligible in 2026, Chepkevich notes.
If the 2020 NBA draft were held again knowing what we know now, Anthony Edwards would still be the No. 1 pick, but a pair of Tyreses – Tyrese Haliburton and Tyrese Maxey – would move into the top three after initially being drafted at No. 12 and No. 21, respectively, according to HoopsHype. In HoopsHype’s 2020 re-draft, a series of late first-rounders move into the top 10, with Desmond Bane jumping from No. 30 to No. 5 while Jaden McDaniels (No. 28 to No. 6), Immanuel Quickley (No. 25 to No. 9), and Payton Pritchard (No. 26 to No. 10) also make big leaps.

NBA Announces Initial Early Entrant List For 2025 Draft

April 29th, 2025 at 10:40am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA has officially released the initial list of early entrants for the 2025 NBA draft, announcing in a press release (Twitter link) that 106 players have filed as early entry candidates. Of those prospects, 73 are from colleges, 30 had been playing for teams internationally, and three were playing non-college ball stateside (in the G League).

While that early entrant total exceeds the number of players who will be selected in this year’s draft (59), it’s down significantly from the figures we’ve seen in recent years. A record 353 early entrants initially declared for the draft in 2021, but that number dropped to 283 in 2022, 242 in 2023, and 201 a year ago.

The NCAA’s NIL policy, which allows college athletes to be paid based on their name, image, and likeness, has been a major factor in that downward trend — fewer prospects feel the need to go pro as soon as possible when they’re earning big money at the college level.

The huge dip this year can also be attributed in large part to the fact that most college seniors are now automatically draft-eligible. In recent years, most fourth-year seniors faced an “early entrant” decision because they were granted an extra year of NCAA eligibility due to COVID-19 and didn’t have the 2020/21 season count toward their typical limit.

This year’s total of 106 early entrants figures to decline significantly by May 28 and again by June 15, the two deadlines for players to withdraw their names from the draft pool. The leftover early entrants will join the college seniors with no remaining eligibility and other automatically eligible players in this year’s draft pool.

Our tracker of early entrants for the 2025 draft is fully up to date and can be found right here.

Here are the changes we made to our tracker today:

Newly added players

College players:

These players either didn’t publicly announce that they were entering the draft or we simply missed it when they did.

Chad Baker-Mazara, G/F, Auburn (senior)
Quincy Ballard, C, Wichita State (senior)
Jaden Bradley, G, Arizona (junior)
Tayton Conerway, G, Troy (senior)
Melvin Council Jr., G, St. Bonaventure (senior)
Jerry Deng, F, Florida State (sophomore)
Isaiah Evans, G/F, Duke (freshman)
Dominick Harris, G, UCLA (senior)
Chris Howell, G, UC San Diego (junior)
Camron McDowell, G, Northwestern Oklahoma State (junior)
Devin McGlockton, F, Vanderbilt (junior)
Kebba Njie, F, Notre Dame (junior)
AK Okereke, F, Cornell (junior)
Omar Rowe, G, Morehouse (senior)
Bruce Thornton, G, Ohio State (junior)
Brandon Walker, F, Montana State (junior)
Money Williams, G, Montana (sophomore)

International players:

These players weren’t previously mentioned on our list of international early entrants. The country listed here indicates where they last played, not necessarily where they were born.

Alec Anigbata, F, Germany (born 2004)
Asim Djulovic, G/F, Serbia (born 2005)
Lazar Gacic, C, Serbia (born 2005)
Ben Henshall, G/F, Australia (born 2004)
Muodubem Muoneke, G, Spain (born 2003)
Eli Ndiaye, C, Spain (born 2004)
Zaion Nebot, G, France (born 2004)
David Torresani, G, Italy (born 2005)
Rocco Zikarsky, C, Australia (born 2006)

Players removed

Despite reports or announcements that the players below would declare for the draft, they didn’t show up on the NBA’s official list.

That could mean a number of things — they may have decided against entering the draft; they may have entered the draft, then withdrawn; they may have had no NCAA eligibility remaining, making them automatically draft-eligible; they may have incorrectly filed their paperwork; or the NBA may have accidentally omitted some names.

Because they’re absent from the NBA’s official list, we’ve removed the following names from our own early entrant list.

Note: Some of these players may also be transferring to new schools.

Abdi Bashir, G, Monmouth (sophomore)
Terrence Brown, G, FDU (sophomore)
Christian Coleman, F, UAB (senior)
Jason Edwards, G, Vanderbilt (junior)
Keyshawn Hall, G/F, UCF (junior)
Nate Johnson, G, Akron (junior)
Duncan Powell, F, Georgia Tech (junior)
Nick Pringle, F, South Carolina
Oziyah Sellers, G, Stanford (junior)
Daniel Skillings, G/F, Cincinnati (junior)
Marquel Sutton, F, Omaha (senior)
Lamar Wilkerson, G, Sam Houston State (senior)
Kam Williams, G/F, Tulane (freshman)
Shelton Williams-Dryden, F, West Georgia (junior)

According to ESPN’s Jonathan Givony (Twitter link), two-time national champion Alex Karaban of UConn also initially filed paperwork to test the draft waters, but withdrew from the pool before the NBA put out today’s early entrant list. He’ll return to the Huskies for his senior season.