Potential for new form of draft-and-stash prospects

The rise of older European players in collegiate basketball has created an interesting draft eligibility question for the league to figure out, writes The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov.

Vorkunov writes that a small section of said international NCAA players were older than 22 years old, and therefore automatically eligible for the draft. This led to the question of what would happen should one of those players be selected in the draft but still wish to play in college, which may be close to being considered by the NBA a professional sport, due to recent rulings about player payments from programs.

Vorkunov notes that according to the CBA, a league is professional if it pays players beyond living expenses, which is soon to be the case with the NCAA.

“Playing intercollegiate basketball will be considered under the provisions of Article X, Section 5 of the CBA to be signing a player contract with a non-NBA professional basketball team,” the league said in a memo before the draft.

This would, by some interpretations, allow those players to become collegiate draft-and-stashes if they chose, in collaboration with the teams that selected them, to remain in school. The team would hold onto the players’ draft rights indefinitely without the player losing collegiate eligibility.

However, this matter has not been decided outright. The league and the Players’ Union will need to work together to determine how to handle this new wrinkle.

There are only a few players that this currently applies to, Vorkunov notes, citing Mihailo Petrovic (Illinois), Ilias Kamardine (Ole Miss), and Sananda Fru (Louisville) as examples. Currently, such players are allowed to play in college while being considered free agents. This would allow them to leave college mid-season to sign with a team if the opportunity arose, a situation that has not occurred since 2007, when Randolph Morris went undrafted in the 2005 draft after not signing with an agent and then left school several years later to sign with the Knicks.

The lack of clarity on the future of these players illustrates the complications of rapidly changing rules governing player payments in the NCAA in regards to how they impact draft eligibility.