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NBA Announces 50 Withdrawals From 2025 Draft Pool

May 30th, 2025 at 10:30am CST by Luke Adams

A total of 50 players have notified the NBA that they wish to be removed from the list of early entrants eligible for the 2025 NBA draft, the league announced today (via Twitter).

The NCAA’s early entry withdrawal deadline passed on Wednesday night at 10:59 pm CT, meaning that players wishing to retain their college eligibility had to remove their names from the draft pool by that point. The NBA’s own withdrawal deadline is 4:00 pm CT on June 15, so more players will be taking their names out of consideration in the coming weeks.

The players who pull out of the draft between now and that June 15 deadline will primarily be international prospects and domestic players who didn’t compete in college.

Players from NCAA programs can still withdraw between now and June 15, but they wouldn’t be eligible to return to college, so they’d likely only take that route if they planned to play professionally in a non-NBA league in 2025/26.

Currently, by our count, 59 early entrants remain in the draft pool after 106 initially declared. You can check out our updated early entrant list right here.

While most of the 50 withdrawal decisions confirmed today by the NBA were reported or announced leading up to Wednesday’s NCAA deadline, we’d been waiting for formal confirmation on a small handful of college players, whose names we have now moved to the withdrawals section of our early entrants tracker. Those players are as follows:

The following non-college players have also withdrawn from the draft, per the NBA:

  • Thierry Darlan, G, Delaware Blue Coats (born 2004)
  • Paul Mbiya, F/C, ASVEL — France (born 2005)
    • Note: Mbiya is joining N.C. State.

Finally, in case you’re wondering why we still have 59 early entrants in the draft pool when 106 declared and 50 have withdrawn, here’s what’s going on there: Three of the names on today’s list of withdrawals weren’t on the NBA’s initial list of early entrants. So it sounds like at least 109 prospects actually declared as early entrants, rather than just the 106 originally announced by the league.

Here are the three players who weren’t on the NBA’s initial list of early entrants and have now opted to return to school after testing the draft waters:

  • Ven-Allen Lubin, F, North Carolina (junior)
    • Note: Lubin is the transfer portal.
  • Malik Thomas, G, San Francisco (senior)
    • Note: Thomas is transferring to Virginia.
  • Lamar Wilkerson, G, Sam Houston State (junior)
    • Note: Wilkerson is transferring to Indiana.
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Labaron Philon Withdraws From Draft, Returning To Alabama

May 29th, 2025 at 7:02am CST by Luke Adams

Labaron Philon was among the prospects to withdraw from the NBA draft ahead of Wednesday’s deadline for early entrants to remove their names and retain their NCAA eligibility. The Alabama guard, who will return to the Crimson Tide for the 2025/26 season, announced the news on Instagram.

The 11th-hour reversal comes as a surprise, since Philon stated two weeks ago that he was “all-in on the draft,” with reporting at the time indicating that he had informed Alabama head coach Nate Oats that he wouldn’t be returning to the program.

It’s great news for the Crimson Tide, allowing the program to retain a player who emerged as a starter in his first college season and earned a spot on the SEC’s All-Freshman team. Philon averaged 10.6 points, 3.8 assists, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.4 steals in 24.7 minutes per game across 37 outings (29 starts) in 2024/25, with a shooting line of .452/.315/.767.

Philon was projected to be the No. 33 overall pick in ESPN’s most recent mock draft and was viewed as a borderline first-round pick. Rather than take his chances this spring, he’ll look to boost his draft stock at Alabama in ’25/26 and could declare as an early entrant again next year if his odds of becoming a first-rounder have improved.

Notre Dame big man Kebba Njie was also among the other prospects who withdrew from the draft ahead of Wednesday’s deadline, notes Jon Chepkevich of DraftExpress (Twitter link). Njie will rejoin the Fighting Irish for his senior year after averaging 6.1 points and 5.9 rebounds in 23.5 minutes per game as a junior.

We’ve updated our early entrant tracker with all of the latest updates on college players’ draft decisions.

There are a few cases where a player’s intent has not yet been fully confirmed — for example, Montana guard Money Williams announced in late March that he would be returning to the Grizzlies for the 2025/26 season, but he still went through the draft process and there have been no updates since then confirming that he has removed his name from the pool. So until we get official word one way or the other, we’re keeping him in the “testing the waters” section of our tracker rather than assuming he has withdrawn.

The NBA typically provides an update shortly after the NCAA’s withdrawal deadline passes on which players have pulled out of the draft, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for that in the coming days.

The next major draft-related deadline to watch is on June 15, which is the NBA’s own withdrawal deadline. It applies primarily to international prospects who didn’t have to worry about Wednesday’s NCAA cutoff.

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Northwest Notes: Edwards, Randle, Jazz Draft, Trail Blazers Workouts

May 27th, 2025 at 9:42pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Anthony Edwards scored just 16 points in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals on Monday. However, the Timberwolves superstar believes he played the game the way it’s supposed to be played.

“I don’t look at it like I struggled, or (Julius Randle) struggled,” Edwards said. “They just, they had a good game plan, making us get off the ball. Especially for me, man. They were super in the gaps, I made the right play all night.”

Edwards only attempted 13 shots and made just one three-pointer.

“It’s an urge that I want to get the ball in the rim, put it up there,” Edwards said, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN. “But you don’t want to take bad shots and get your team out of rhythm. So I was just playing the game the right way, man.”

We have more from the Northwest Division:

  • Randle took just seven shots and made only one. He was disappointed in himself that he wasn’t more assertive, he told Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. “I’ve got to figure out a way to get myself in position to be more aggressive, rather than just standing, spectating or trying to crash the glass,” he said. “Or I can just find other little things to do.”
  • The Jazz possess the No. 5 and 21 picks in the first round and pair of second-rounders in next month’s draft. Multiple league sources indicated to the Deseret News’ Sarah Todd that the front office is willing to hear offers and make deals on any of those draft picks. However, considering it’s been over a decade since Utah had a top-five selection, Todd believes it’s likely that the Jazz will retain the No. 5 pick.
  • Zach Hicks (Penn State), Chris Manon (Vanderbilt), Wade Taylor IV (Texas A&M), Caleb Love (Arizona), Zack Austin (Pittsburgh) and Money Williams (Montana) worked out for the Trail Blazers on Tuesday, Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report tweets. That group is comprised of players trying to earn second-round consideration.
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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.

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 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.

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.

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