Duke forward Jayson Tatum is the latest NCAA underclassmen to confirm that he’ll declare for the 2017 NBA draft. The school made it official today, announcing in a tweet that Tatum would test the draft waters. According to Evan Daniels of Scout.com, Tatum is also expected to hire an agent, forgoing his remaining college eligibility.
“It’s extremely exciting,” Tatum said. “It’s just another step closer to a life long dream that I’ve always had and it’s the next step and I’m happy to be taking it.”
Tatum’s decision comes as no surprise, since he is viewed as one of the top prospects on the board for the 2017 draft. Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress.com and Chad Ford of ESPN.com both have the freshman ranked as the No. 4 overall prospect on their respective top 100 lists.
In his first – and likely only – year at Duke, Tatum filled up the stat sheet, averaging 16.8 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 2.1 APG, 1.3 SPG, and 1.1 BPG. According to Ford, the 6’8″ forward has “all the physical tools” to be a dominant small forward in the NBA, and there’s a good chance Tatum will be a top-five pick in June.
Tatum could ultimately be joined in the draft pool by some early-entry teammates from Duke. However, at this point, Luke Kennard and Grayson Allen are “up in the air” about testing the draft waters, reports Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv (Twitter link).
A life-long dream tends to be something “… that I’ve always had”. University is a joke for these guys. Get them in the pros younger, longer careers, less farce.
Would Ruin the billion dollar industry that is college basketball. I say go the other way. Require 2 years of college. Many of these freshman declaring will be out of the league in 2-3 years and won’t have a degree to fall back on. (Not calling Tatum a scrub. He will be a future superstar). Also making the requirement to two years will improve college basketballs product. This will also help those rookies when they go into the NBA because their games will be more developed
So what are you going to do when the top players start taking the money overseas and stop playing with colleges at all. You want a 2 year requirement to make college basketball better. All those kids here is you want them to take another year off their already relatively short career to play for free before they can become a pro. I’m honestly surprised we don’t already have more Emmanuel Mudiay examples.
Going overseas would be stupid. It’s actually hurt their draft stock. Overseas doesn’t offer the competition that college does, esp if you go to a good conference.
Literally you’re saying guys playing against players who will never crack an NBA roster, except for 1 or 2 guys, overseas is smarter than playing against top tier talent in college that will fill NBA rosters for years.
Please don’t ever become an agent and tell a kid to do that. Mudiay did that and while a top 5 pick has been a colossal disappointment.
Depends where they go overseas. The Spanish League is pretty well respected if you go to the top league. China is also respected. Even if the talent as a whole isn’t there, the appeal for playing overseas is that you essentially have a teenager playing against grown men who have either been in the NBA or their foreign league for a couple of years. If a player can do well there, then it might be more appealing than going to college (from a competitive standpoint).
Respected but not as good talent wise. link to pr.nba.com you look at roster breakdowns foreign players arent cracking nba rosters as much as us born players. Teams are gonna invest more in scouting in the usa than overseas. 113 foreign born players make up roughly 1/4 the league if you think 30 something teams 15 per thats 450 players. Which means 3/4 came from colleges.
Kids playing against old guys who use to be in the league and players who never will crack an nba roster and players who were forced to go oveseas cause nobody wanted them isnt the same as playing against high quality competition in college.
You talk about only one or two guys on a these over seas team are going to touch an roster NBA roster how many kids on these college teams end up on NBA teams exactly? There are 60 picks in the draft. So 60 kids out of how many tens of thousands of college basketball players there are. And more and more of those draft slots are being taken by over seas guys. You are under estimating the talent level in some not all but some of these overseas leagues and you are way overestimating the talent at the college level.