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Draft Updates: Govindy, Pansa, Faye, Seaborn

April 19th, 2018 at 9:38am CST by Luke Adams

The list of international prospects declaring for the 2018 NBA draft as early entrants continues to grow. As ESPN’s Jonathan Givony reports (via Twitter), three 1997-born big men currently playing in France are entering this year’s draft pool, per their agency Comsport. Those players are Melvyn Govindy, Jean-Marc Pansa, and Ibrahima Fall Faye. They’ll have until June 11 to decide whether to remain in the 2018 draft or withdraw their names. If they pull out of this year’s event, they’ll be draft-eligible in 2019.

Here are a few more draft notes:

  • Givony has updates on two more international early entrants declaring for the draft, reporting that Turkish forward Muhaymin Mustafa and Congolese center Viny Okouo have both made themselves eligible (Twitter link). While Okouo was born in 1997, Mustafa was born in 1999, which means he’d have two more chances to enter the draft early if he withdraws his name this year.
  • Slovenian shooting guard Blaz Mesicek has elected to enter the draft as an early entrant, per agent Misko Raznatovic (Twitter link). The 1997-born prospect has averaged 9.7 PPG and shot 40.8% on three-pointers in 26 games for Brindisi in the Italian League.
  • Monmouth junior guard Micah Seaborn announced in a post on Instagram that he has opted to enter the NBA draft without hiring an agent. Seaborn established new career highs in 2017/18 with 13.7 PPG and a .436/.442/.887 shooting line.
  • Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders breaks down the 2018 NBA draft class in tiers, with a three-player top tier of “potential future All-Stars” leading the way.
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NBA Confirms 182 Early Entrants For 2017 Draft

April 25th, 2017 at 5:40pm CST by Luke Adams

With the deadline for early entrants to enter the 2017 NBA draft now behind us, the league has officially released the list of this year’s early entry candidates, and it’s a long one. According to the NBA’s announcement, 182 players have declared early for the draft — 137 college players and 45 international prospects. That’s a new record.

As was the case a year ago, NCAA rules changes allow underclassmen to “test the waters” before officially committing to the 2017 NBA draft. NCAA early entrants can withdraw their names any time up until May 24 while maintaining their NCAA eligibility, as long as they haven’t hired agents. That means that prospects testing the waters can take part in the NBA draft combine from May 9-14 – if invited – and they can work out for individual teams in the coming weeks.

International early entrants can also withdraw their names from the draft pool within the next several weeks. The final draft list will be set after the early entrant withdrawal deadline for international and other non-NCAA players passes on June 12.

A year ago, a whopping 162 NCAA and international players declared their intent to enter the draft early, but 91 of those players eventually withdrew. This year should follow a similar pattern, so the group of eligible draftees for 2017 figures to be reduced significantly by June 12.

Listed below are the current early entrants, according to the NBA. Players whose intent to declare wasn’t previously reported on Hoops Rumors are listed in italics.

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