The NBA draft is a major annual event in which all the 30 franchises in the National Basketball Association select new players for their teams.
[citation needed] However, the league eventually established a rule that "a player could not make himself available" for the draft until eight years after his high school graduation.
After the 1969–70 season, he left college for the NBA's rival at the time, the American Basketball Association (ABA), which offered a hardship exemption for players who were not four years removed from high school.
Haywood then signed a contract with the Seattle SuperSonics (later relocated to become the Oklahoma City Thunder), which put him and the Sonics on a collision course with the NBA, as he was only three years removed from his high school graduation.
Haywood responded by filing an antitrust suit against the league, seeking an injunction to prevent the NBA from disallowing the contract or punishing the Sonics.
This rule quickly developed into one that was observed in the breach, with Sport magazine writer Jackie Lapin commenting in the 1970s that "Almost anyone who has been any good at the game in the past decade would qualify [as a hardship case]—with the probable exception of Bill Bradley, the banker's son.
[9] Ultimately, the union reluctantly agreed to an age limit of 19, accepting it in exchange for tweaks to salary cap rules that were favorable to the players' interests.
[8] The current eligibility rules were established under the NBA's 2005 collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which expired in 2011, resulting in a lockout.
The previous CBA, approved in December 2011, made no changes to the draft rules, but called for the NBA and its players union to form a committee to discuss draft-related issues.
Stern stated the rules were business-related and not a "social program", citing the need to see players perform against higher competition before they are evaluated for valuable draft picks.
[15] High school players who would otherwise have jumped directly into the NBA were instead playing in college for the required year before leaving and entering the draft—a phenomenon known as one and done.
The NBA notified its member teams in a memorandum later in June that the earliest possible draft without the one-year rule (not named in the memo), among eligibility changes, was initially in 2021,[21][22] only to be moved forward in October to 2022.
[29] After this date, "early entry" players may attend NBA pre-draft camps and individual team workouts to show off their skills and obtain feedback regarding their draft positions.
[31] In 2011, the NCAA shortened its timeline for players to withdraw and retain eligibility to one day before the start of the spring signing period for men's basketball, which occurs in April.
[33] Due to disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA announced that for the 2020 draft, the withdrawal deadline was changed to 10 days after the combine or August 3, whichever comes first.
Oklahoma City Thunder guard Terrance Ferguson had originally committed to Alabama then Arizona, but then decided to play in Australia for the Adelaide 36ers.
Recently drafted Portland Trail Blazers guard Anfernee Simons decided to skip out on college altogether, and instead opted to spend a postgraduate year at the IMG Academy.
[44][45] In 2021, Overtime Elite was formed with a similar purpose for 16-to-20-year-olds, building upon a predecessor league created in 2018 called the Junior Basketball Association.
[46][47] In March 2015, following a series of meetings that began at the 2014 men's Final Four, the NBA, NCAA, and the trade association for college men's coaches, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), announced a plan that would give college underclassmen a better opportunity to make an informed decision about their NBA status than the then-current system.
Additionally, players may declare for the draft multiple times without losing college eligibility, as long as they withdraw before the new deadline without hiring an agent or signing a professional basketball contract, and are now allowed to attend the draft combine and one tryout per year for each NBA team without losing college eligibility.