New athlete-friendly NBA draft withdrawal deadline is long overdue
When guard Vander Blue entered the NBA draft after his junior year at Marquette in 2013, he thought he had an outside chance to be a late first-round pick. He instead went unselected and has bounced around the D-League.
When forward Khem Birch entered the NBA draft after his junior season at UNLV in 2014, he expected to be taken in the second round and to earn a roster spot in training camp. He instead is playing overseas in Turkey this season.
When wing J.P. Tokoto entered the NBA draft after his junior season at North Carolina last spring, he hoped an NBA team would use a roster spot to develop him. He instead is averaging 12.7 points per game for the D-League’s Oklahoma City Blue.
Those are just three of the myriad of players who might have benefited had the NCAA passed Wednesday’s long-overdue draft legislation sooner. In an effort to reform the early-entry process and help players make more informed decisions, the NCAA pushed back the deadline for underclassmen to withdraw from the draft until 10 days after the NBA draft combine.
What that means is that testing the waters will again become a viable option for underclassmen who want to investigate their stock yet still preserve the option of returning to school.
Last year’s withdrawal deadline was April 16, just 10 days after the national title game and long before NBA teams begin to hold workouts or seriously evaluate draft prospects. This year’s withdrawal deadline will be May 25, giving draft prospects a much more fair chance to evaluate how they stack up.
The other athlete-friendly change the NCAA made was to allow prospects the chance to declare for the draft more than once with no penalty as long as they withdraw by the deadline each time. In previous years, any players who already tested the waters once could not do so a second time without rendering themselves ineligible to return to college basketball.
The changes are much-needed reversal to a misguided 2011 rule change made at the expense of athletes. The NCAA’s legislative council voted to move the draft withdrawal deadline underclassmen to the day before the spring letter-of-intent signing period, which begins in mid-April every year.
What possible benefit could there have been to accelerating the deadline so much that it preceded draft workouts and provided less time to gather information from NBA scouts? For the athletes, none. For the coaches, plenty.
Many college basketball coaches favored the accelerated timeline because it made it easier to know what holes needed to be filled in their rosters. If the deadline was before the spring signing period, it offered more of a chance for programs to woo a recruit to fill the void left by a departing underclassman.
The new timetable drew frequent criticism the past few years because the public often saw the issue through the eyes of draft prospects rather than college coaches. As a result, officials from the NCAA, NBA and National Association of Basketball Coaches huddled together in hopes of finding a solution that would provide more flexibility for basketball players with professional aspirations.
The issue ultimately came down to this simple question: Whose interests matter more — the athletes or the coaches?
The oft-criticized 2011 legislation was a massive concession to the coaches and an emphatic middle finger to the athletes. Wednesday’s rule change was a smart, badly needed reversal.
– – – – – – –
Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
