The Division I Council will consider a proposal made by the NCAA men’s basketball oversight committee that will move back the deadline to withdraw from the NBA Draft.
In a release sent out on Tuesday, the NCAA stated that the proposal under consideration would move the deadline for an underclassmen that has declared for the NBA Draft to remove their name to 10 days after the NBA Draft Combine.
The NCAA’s current deadline to declare is totally irrelevant in the current landscape of college basketball. The NBA’s deadline for underclassmen to declare typically comes in late April, and as of now, declaring for the draft is final; their is no more testing the waters. If the current proposal was implemented last year, the deadline to withdraw from the NBA Draft would have been on May 27th, giving student-athletes making the most important decision of their lives an extra month to decide whether or not they will turn professional.
The proposal would also allow underclassmen to workout with NBA teams without jeopardizing their eligibility.
This proposal, which was reported last March and officially sponsored in June, is a change that the NCAA absolutely should implement. The NCAA has previously had rules allowing underclassmen to test their NBA Draft stock and return to school but that rule was changed has coaches were unhappy about the uncertainty surrounding the future of their roster.