Alex Reese

Thunder Sign Cormac Ryan, Two Others

The Thunder have signed rookie free agent shooting guard Cormac Ryan, the team announced today. While the terms of the contract weren’t revealed, it’s almost certainly an Exhibit 10 deal.

Ryan played college basketball for Stanford, Notre Dame, and North Carolina from 2018-24, appearing in a total of 152 games at the NCAA level, including 36 in 2023/24 for the Tar Heels. As a “super-senior” last season, he averaged 11.5 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 1.2 assists in 30.3 minutes per game with a shooting line of .382/.354/.874.

The Thunder added Ryan to their Summer League roster in July and he suited up in a total of seven games in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, averaging 4.0 PPG and 2.3 RPG on 19.4% shooting in 12.7 MPG. Despite his underwhelming Summer League performance, it seems the 6’5″ guard is in Oklahoma City’s plans for the coming season.

In all likelihood, Ryan will be waived at some point before the regular season begins and will report to the Thunder’s G League affiliate, the OKC Blue. If he spends at least 60 days with the Blue, he’ll be eligible for an Exhibit 10 bonus worth up to $77.5K on top of his standard G League salary.

In addition to announcing Ryan’s deal, the Thunder also confirmed today that they’ve signed forwards Malevy Leons and Alex Reese, whose Exhibit 10 agreements with the club were previously reported — one in June and one earlier in the day on Friday.

The Thunder now have 20 players on their preseason roster. More moves are likely coming sooner or later, as they’ve yet to finalize reported Exhibit 10 deals with Buddy Boeheim and Javonte Cooke.

Thunder, Alex Reese Agree To Exhibit 10 Deal

The Thunder and free agent forward Alex Reese have agreed to an Exhibit 10 contract, agent Billy Davis tells Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link).

Reese, who played at Alabama from 2017-21, averaged just 5.4 points per game on .369/.282/.706 shooting during his senior season with the Crimson Tide, then spent a year away from basketball, working as a bartender and moving furniture, per GTV Hoops (Instagram link).

After taking some time away from the sport, Reese signed to play in Luxembourg in 2022/23, then spent the ’23/24 season with the Rip City Remix in the G League. In 43 total Showcase Cup and regular season games for Portland’s affiliate, he averaged 11.5 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks in just 17.3 minutes per contest, posting a solid shooting line of .442/.405/.766.

Reese’s strong showing in the NBAGL earned him a spot on Portland’s Summer League roster in July. He registered averages of 7.6 PPG and 2.2 RPG in five games (12.0 MPG) in Las Vegas, making just 32.4% of his shots from the field, including 29.6% of his three-point tries.

The Thunder most likely envision Reese suiting up for their G League team – the Oklahoma City Blue – in 2024/25, though they’ll have to acquire his returning rights from the Remix to make that happen. Assuming the Blue acquire those rights and Reese is waived by the Thunder, his Exhibit 10 contract will make him eligible for a bonus worth up to $77.5K on top of his standard G League salary if he spends at least 60 days with OKC’s NBAGL squad.

NBA Announces Initial Early Entrant List For 2021 Draft

The NBA has officially released the initial list of early entrants for the 2021 NBA draft, announcing in a press release that 353 players have filed as early entry candidates. Of those prospects, 296 are from colleges, while 57 are international early entrants.

That number obliterates the previous record of 236 early entrants, established in 2018. That had been expected, however, since the NCAA gave players an extra year of eligibility due to the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in seniors having to decide between staying at college for one more season or declaring for the draft as an “early” entrant.

Since well over half of the college early entrants are seniors, there are actually fewer college underclassmen than usual in this initial group of early entrants.

This year’s total of 353 early entrants figures to shrink significantly by July 7 and again by July 19, the two deadlines for players to withdraw their names from the draft pool. But it still looks like the pool will remain extremely crowded, with the eventual number of early entrants certain to exceed 60, the number of picks in the draft.

Our tracker of early entrants for the 2021 draft now includes seniors and is fully up to date. It can be found right here. It doesn’t include players who are automatically draft-eligible this year. As Jonathan Givony of ESPN tweets, that list of auto-eligible players includes the prospects who played for the G League Ignite, such as Jalen Green and Jonathan Kuminga.

Here are the changes we made to our tracker today:


Newly-added players:

College players:

These players hadn’t previously been included on our unofficial list of underclassmen early entrants and weren’t on the list of senior early entrants that the NBA sent to teams last week.

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.


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 incorrectly filed their paperwork; or the NBA may have accidentally omitted some names.

In any case, we’ve removed the following names from our early entrant list for the time being.