Today is Monday, July 19, which means it’s deadline day for the early entrants who declared for the 2021 NBA draft. Those players have until 5:00 pm ET today to decide whether they’ll remain in this year’s draft pool or remove their names and become draft-eligible in a future year.
The NCAA always sets its own early entrant withdrawal deadline that comes before the NBA’s deadline, and that one occurred earlier this month, on July 7. Most college players who are going to pull out of the draft did so by that deadline
A college player could theoretically wait until today to withdraw from the draft. However, in that scenario he’d lose his NCAA eligibility and would likely end up playing professionally in an international league for the next year before becoming draft-eligible.
Most of the players who will withdraw between July 7 and today’s deadline are international prospects who don’t have to worry about the NCAA’s rules. According to recent reports, these are some of the players who have removed their names from the draft pool after initially declaring as early entrants:
- Carlos Alocen, G, Spain (Twitter link via ESPN’s Jonathan Givony)
- Aleksander Balcerowski, C, Spain (Twitter link via agent Misko Raznatovic)
- Kenny Baptiste, F, France (Twitter link via Givony)
- Hugo Besson, G, France (Twitter link via Givony)
- Malcolm Cazalon, G, Serbia (Twitter link via Raznatovic)
- Tom Digbeu, G/F, Lithuania (Twitter link via Givony)
- Ousmane Diop, F, Italy (Twitter link via Givony)
- Yoan Makoundou, F, France (Twitter link via Givony)
- Zsombor Maronka, F/C, Spain (Twitter link via Givony)
- Karlo Matkovic, F/C, Serbia (Twitter link via Raznatovic)
- Mario Nakic, F, Belgium (Twitter link via Raznatovic)
- Barra Njie, G, Sweden (Twitter link via JD Shaw of Hoops Rumors)
- Pavel Savkov, G/F, Spain (Twitter link via Givony)
- Boris Tisma, F, Spain (Twitter link via Raznatovic)
Once today’s deadline passes, the NBA will put out an official list of the early entrants who are eligible to be drafted in 2021. That list typically shows up within about 24 hours of the withdrawal deadline, though it’s possible it could take a little longer this year since the list of eligible players will be longer (since NCAA seniors are also on it). In the meantime, our extremely unofficial early entrant list can be found right here.
One international early entrant who won’t be withdrawing, according to Givony (Twitter link), is Juhann Begarin, who will turn 19 next month. The French shooting guard is coming off a strong season playing for Paris Basketball, and agent Bouna Ndiaye tells Givony that his client will keep his name in the draft.