One of the top European talents appears to be on his way to the NBA, as Clint Capela has officially entered the draft, his French team announced (translation via Sportando’s Emiliano Carchia). The French league power forward is No. 18 in Chad Ford’s ESPN.com prospect rankings, and Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress has him at No. 19.
Capela is 6’11” with a wingspan of 7’4.5″ that helps him defensively and on the boards. He averaged 7.0 rebounds in 20.9 minutes per game for Elan Chalon in France, though he isn’t a featured player on offense, scoring 9.7 points on 6.4 shots per game. The native of Switzerland spent nearly half the season coming off the bench.
An NBA team would have to pay $500K to buy him out of his French contract, as Marc J. Spears of Yahoo! Sports reported earlier this month, though that probably wouldn’t be a stumbling block. It wouldn’t come out of his rookie scale salary, since it’s less than the Excluded International Player Payment Amount specified in the collective bargaining agreement.