This morning, news broke of new NCAA rules involving their amateur athletes, the NBA draft, and the signing of agents. With the new rules, players who enter the draft but go undrafted will be able to return to their respective school, something that wasn’t previously possible.
The other big change coming involves players who are classified as “elite” being able to hire an agent. This includes both high school and college players, which seemingly is leading the way for the return of players being eligible to be drafted out of high school. Prospects can sign with an agent starting July 1st prior to their final year of high school, and college players are able to sign following every season.
Players used to be eligible for the NBA Draft immediately out of high school, but this changed in 2005 when a new rule arose that required athletes to wait one year after graduating in order to be drafted. In recent years though, players like Anfernee Simmons and Thon Maker have been selected as Post-Graduate students, in which they had an extra senior year.
With the new rules announced today, many have began to suspect that Adam Silver will make a change within the next few years to get rid of the all too common one-and-done method that high-profile prospects do by playing a single college season before entering the draft.
The NCAA released that USA Basketball would be the party to determine if a prospect was “elite” or not, but NBA-insider Adrian Wojnarowski has reported that many are unhappy with the announcement as USAB had no prior knowledge of it. An ideal alternative would be where USAB hosts camps where the NCAA itself (or NBA scouts) will classify the participants, which makes way for international prospects such as R.J. Barrett who are unable to play for their teams.
The NBA and its Players’ Association haven’t agreed to the planned rule changes yet, which comes as a shock to many that the NCAA would release them without this step. The league’s spokesman Tim Frank said they “will review the NCAA’s planned reforms and continue to assess, along with our Players’ Association, the potential for any related NBA rules changes”.
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