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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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And-Ones: Howard, Team USA, F. Jackson, Zikarsky

July 7th, 2023 at 4:01pm CST by Luke Adams

Longtime NBA center Dwight Howard was out of the league during the 2022/23 season, which he spent in Taiwan. However, he still believes he can be a productive player in an NBA rotation, he said during a wide-ranging interview with Zion Olojede of Complex.com.

“I know that there’s at least 15 to 20 teams that I could play for,” Howard said. “And I know there’s teams that got great starting centers, but I know I could be a great backup center. I know I can provide a team with 25 minutes of dominant basketball. And that’s not even scoring, that’s just playing defense, locking people up, protecting the paint, rebounding, and finishing around the basket. I’ve had my fun in the game. I just want to go out like a champ like I’m supposed to.”

Referencing a June interview in which Howard said he’d love to join the Kings, Olojede asked the three-time Defensive Player of the Year which five teams he believes would be good matches for him.

“Okay, you got Miami Heat. You got obviously, the Lakers. The Warriors,” Howard said. “The Kings. But the Kings, I would say the Kings got a couple centers so they probably wouldn’t. But the Kings. The Hawks. I’m from Atlanta, go back home with the Hawks.”

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

  • Discussing his roster for the upcoming FIBA World Cup for the first time on Friday, Team USA head coach Steve Kerr said he plans to lean heavily on Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and Nets forward Mikal Bridges. As Joe Vardon of The Athletic writes, Kerr envisions Brunson having “a pretty big role” and intends to rely on Bridges defensively to match up against opponents’ high-scoring wings.
  • Veteran NBA guard Frank Jackson, who had a brief stint with the Jazz this past season, will continue his career overseas, having signed a deal with French team ASVEL, per a press release. Jackson had appeared in 214 career regular season NBA games since being drafted in 2017.
  • Rocco Zikarsky, a 7’3″ Australian big man, has decided to forgo a move to the NCAA in favor of joining the Brisbane Bullets as part of the National Basketball League’s Next Stars program, he tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN. Zikarsky, who will turn 17 next week, won’t be draft-eligible until at least 2025, but is considered one of the world’s best basketball prospects, per Givony.
  • John Hollinger of The Athletic doesn’t want to go so far as to call them the “losers” of free agency, but has questions about the offseason moves made so far by the Raptors, Pelicans, Kings, Trail Blazers, and Nuggets.
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