Influx of NBA Draft-eligible players into college raises questions for league, union

LAS VEGAS — A few days before the NBA Draft, one of the league’s top lawyers sent an email to all of its general managers about a small subset of players who could be selected later that week. The memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Athletic, addressed an obscure aspect of the league’s draft-rights rules but also discussed the changes that resulted from the infusion of money into college basketball during the name, image and likeness era.

This year, several European players left their professional clubs in Europe to join college basketball programs in the United States. A small number of them were already 22 years old, which made them automatically eligible for the NBA Draft, according to league rules, which govern eligibility for players outside the NCAA system by their ages and not when they exhaust their collegiate eligibility or declare for the draft.

What would happen if these players were drafted and still wanted to play college basketball? That question prompted the memo and left the league in a quandary about how to account for this new class of players — and a dilemma for the NCAA as well. College basketball may be close to being considered a pro sport, at least in the NBA’s eyes.

If an international player is drafted by an NBA team but chooses to stay with his professional team, the NBA club retains his draft rights in perpetuity — a draft-and-stash, as those players are sometimes known. But that has not been an issue for a college player, who, if drafted, would come straight to the NBA, either because he has no college eligibility left or declared early for the draft while maintaining eligibility. Here, none of those cases applied.

While the memo only accounted for a “limited” number of players, the NBA still had to figure out how to account for them. Based on the NBA’s interpretation, such a player is no different from a draft-and-stash. It did not matter whether the player played for the University of Kansas or Real Madrid; the league would handle each player as if he were on a professional team.

According to the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, a professional team or league is defined as any that pays a player beyond living expenses, which is where college sports now finds itself. While college athletes have received payments for NIL since 2021, those have been from collectives, companies and other external sources; now, with the newly enshrined House settlement, they can also be paid directly by their schools.

“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 memo said.

But this was not necessarily a binding opinion, as the league’s lawyer made clear. The National Basketball Players Association, the memo said, could potentially contest this interpretation. The union could argue that if such a player were taken in the draft, his rights would only belong to the team that selected him for a year before he became a free agent.

Because this is a new issue the NBA must deal with, and is not accounted for in the CBA, the league and union need to agree on these rules, and official guidance still needs to be hashed out. The two sides have talked about potential clarifications to the CBA to address such cases.

One issue the league and union seem to agree on is what has happened to those players now. They are free to play in college, but, in the NBA’s eyes, they are free agents. That means they can sign with a team at any point.

This will impact only a few players, such as Illinois commit Mihailo Petrović, a 22-year-old guard from Mega Superbet of the Adriatic league, Ole Miss guard Ilias Kamardine of the French league and Louisville forward Sananda Fru, who played in Germany the last four seasons. 

Those players will not have to worry about their college eligibility, either. An NCAA spokesperson told The Athletic that its rules allow a player who is automatically entered into the draft to be selected without risking their NCAA eligibility.

“Under NCAA rules, if a player is drafted by an NBA team in the 2025 draft, he may still be eligible to compete for a D-I program provided he meets all other NCAA academic and athletics eligibility requirements and all other school and conference requirements,” the spokesperson said.

That ruling should give some peace to the players involved. It also opens up a rarely seen portal to the NBA. There have not been many cases of a college basketball player leaving his team midseason to sign with an NBA team. The most recent case was 2007, when Randolph Morris played his junior year at Kentucky after he went unchosen in the 2005 NBA Draft, went back to school for two seasons (Morris had not signed with an agent) and signed with the New York Knicks in March.

Tax check-in

The Minnesota Timberwolves paid $90.4 million in luxury taxes for the 2024-25 season, second most in the league behind the Phoenix Suns. Next season, they will have new ownership as Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez finally took over this month after a protracted legal battle with former owner Glen Taylor.

After making the Western Conference finals in two straight seasons, the Timberwolves are set to pay into the luxury tax again during the 2025-26 season and own the fifth-highest payroll in the league.

Lore, who will serve as Timberwolves governor, said he and Rodriguez are willing to pay the tax if they think it will benefit the franchise and its value in the long term. For now, the Timberwolves will pay the regular tax rates, but if they spend into the tax three times in a four-season stretch, they would pay the more punitive repeater tax rates if they are also in the tax the next season.

“We think about it like we do a startup, where startups lose money, but they’re investing because it’s creating enterprise value over the long term,” Lore said. “And I think that’s the way we think about. It is investing in the team, in winning, creates long-term franchise value. That’s not over the next three to five years, but 10 to 20, the next 50 years, even. So, we’re prepared to invest, we’re prepared to lose money to create a winning culture. But a sustainable winning culture, not just a one year — you’re not going to see us do what maybe people might expect us to do, which is come in as owners and make some big flashy move. We’re being very methodical about the decisions we make, and we’re thinking in every decision what’s in the best interest of building a long-term, sustainable culture of winning.”

NBA teams paid $461.2 million in luxury taxes this season, according to the league’s calculations, after 10 teams finished the season above the tax line. The Los Angeles Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks and Golden State Warriors were repeater taxpayers. The Lakers paid $53.48 million in luxury taxes after spending $17.45 million into the tax, while the Celtics paid $52.56 million and the Knicks paid $38 million. That means that the 20 teams that did not reach the luxury tax threshold will receive a nice payout from the league. They will each get $11.53 million for staying under the tax.

(Photo of 2025 NBA Draft: Mike Lawrie / Getty Images)