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Thiero, Penda, Pettiford Among Latest Draft Early Entrants

April 8th, 2025 at 2:46pm CST by Rory Maher

French forward Noah Penda is declaring for the 2025 NBA draft, agent Francois Nyam tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN (Twitter link).

Penda has spent the 2024/25 season playing in France’s top domestic league, the LNB Élite. In 24 games with Le Mans, he has averaged 10.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 steals in 25.8 minutes per contest, with a shooting slash line of .431/.292/.753.

The 20-year-old combo forward comes off the board at No. 32 overall in ESPN’s latest mock draft (Insider link), and No. 24 in the latest mock from Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report, making him a potential late first-round pick.

Arkansas junior Adou Thiero is also declaring for the 2025 draft (Instagram link). Theiro, who goes No. 26 overall in ESPN’s mock and No. 39 in Bleacher Report’s, didn’t say anything about keeping his remaining college eligibility, so it sounds like he’s committed to staying in the draft.

An athletic forward, Thiero had a productive season for the Razorbacks, averaging 15.6 PPG, 5.8 RPG, 1.9 APG and 1.6 SPG on .545/.256/.686 shooting in 27 games (27.5 MPG). He’s viewed as a project at this point, per ESPN’s Jeremy Woo, but has considerable upside if he can improve in certain areas (ball-handling, shooting, among others).

Here are a couple more draft early entrants:

  • Auburn freshman Tahaad Pettiford will declare for the draft while maintaining his college eligibility, according to Givony (Twitter link). The 6’1″ point guard goes No. 39 overall in ESPN’s mock. He averaged 11.6 PPG, 2.2 RPG, 3.0 APG and 0.9 SPG on .421/.366/.804 shooting in 38 games (22.9 MPG) in ’24/25, helping the Tigers advance to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.
  • Junior forward Tae Davis, who spent this past season with Notre Dame, will enter the draft with the goal of securing a guaranteed contract, agent Ron Shade tells Givony. If Davis withdraws from the draft, he will transfer to Oklahoma, Givony adds. Davis goes undrafted in the mocks from ESPN and Bleacher Report.
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NBA’s 2024 Draft Withdrawal Deadline Has Passed

June 17th, 2024 at 7:40am CST by Luke Adams

The deadline for early entrants to withdraw from the 2024 NBA draft passed on Sunday at 5:00 pm Eastern time, meaning that any players who haven’t removed their names from consideration at that point will remain in this year’s draft pool.

Because the NCAA has its own draft withdrawal deadline earlier in the spring, the NBA’s deadline typically represents decision day for non-college players, including international prospects. As we relayed on Sunday, several of those international early entrants who initially tested the draft waters decided to pull out before the deadline.

The following players also withdrew from the draft ahead of Sunday’s deadline:

Additionally, there were several reports on Sunday about international prospects who decided to keep their names in the draft pool. Here are those players:

There was no word on Sunday about several of the big-name international prospects, such as Alexandre Sarr, Zaccharie Risacher, and Tidjane Salaun, but there’s no doubt they kept their names in the draft, since they’re projected lottery picks. Nikola Topic is in that group as well, despite the fact that he recently suffered a partially torn ACL.

As our early entrant tracker shows, there are still a handful of prospects whose intentions haven’t been announced or reported, but it shouldn’t be long before we get clarity on them — the NBA will likely announce its official early entrant list for the 2024 draft at some point within the next 24 to 48 hours or so.

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Northwest Notes: Williams, Blazers, Wolves, Hayward

June 4th, 2024 at 7:47pm CST by Dana Gauruder

As Bulls forward Patrick Williams heads into restricted free agency, look for the Thunder to make a run at him, The Athletic’s Darnell Mayberry reports. A league source tells Mayberry that Oklahoma City has “great interest” in the 22-year-old.

Williams, who has failed to live up to his draft billing as the No. 4 pick in 2020, would give the Thunder more size at power forward. Oklahoma City’s stash of draft picks could entice Chicago to negotiate a sign-and-trade with the Thunder. Williams was limited to 43 games this season due to a foot injury.

We have more from the Northwest Division:

  • The Trail Blazers hosted six draft prospects on Tuesday — Daniss Jenkins (St. John’s), Dillon Jones (Weber State), Spencer Jones (Stanford), Jared McCain (Duke), Noah Penda (JA Vichy-Clermont) and Armel Traore (Ada Blois), Sean Highkin of Rose Garden Report tweets. Out of that group, McCain is the most highly regarded by draft pundits. The point guard is currently rated No. 15 overall on ESPN’s Best Available list. Portland controls the seventh and 14th overall picks, along with No. 34 and No. 40.
  • The Timberwolves were also busy evaluating draft prospects on Tuesday, according to the team’s PR department (Twitter link). Sy Chatman (Buffalo), Enrique Freeman (Akron), Pelle Larsson (Arizona), KJ Simpson (Colorado), Justin Webster (UNLV) and Moses Wood (Washington) visited Minnesota’s practice facility. Larsson (No. 44), a shooting guard, is the highest-ranked prospect among that group on ESPN’s list.
  • In his latest player report card, The Oklahoman’s Joe Mussatto evaluates the forgettable half-season that Gordon Hayward spent with the Thunder. Hayward is headed to unrestricted free agency and Mussatto opines that the forward might be looking at veteran’s minimum offers the remainder of his career.
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Draft Notes: Two-Day Format, Sandfort, Penda, Early Entrants

April 2nd, 2024 at 4:15pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA will hold a two-day draft for the first time this year, but the concept has been batted around for over a decade, according to Jeremy Woo of ESPN, who hears from a team source that a group executives first presented the idea to the league in 2011. Extending the second round to give teams more than two minutes per pick was one important reason for the change, as Woo details.

“Way more second-round picks would be traded every year, except (due to the lack of time between picks) no one knows who has them,” one Eastern Conference executive told Woo. “A team makes a trade, then another trade. I’m spending 10 minutes hunting down picks, and by the time you find out where it is, it’s too late to make a deal.”

“… The second round is not fun. Chaos. Insanity. Not how we should be running our business. This will solve that. We didn’t need a second day, we just needed a longer second round — but I understand we can’t start at 3 p.m. or finish at 3 a.m., so this is a good solution.”

The second round of the draft will get its own day this June and there will be four minutes per pick instead of two. The hope is that, in addition to giving front offices more time to consider their options – including potential deals – the second night of the draft will allow the league’s broadcast partners to better spotlight the 28 players being selected in round two.

“The second round has become more and more important,” NBA head of basketball operations Joe Dumars told ESPN. “Rosters have expanded, and you’re seeing a larger influx of talent into the league, a lot of times from the second round. (The one-day format) was not doing justice for the second-round picks and the teams.”

While it remains to be seen exactly how adding an extra day to the draft may change teams’ strategies, sources who spoke to Woo suggested they wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more action than usual during the final few picks of the first round – as teams look to land players before rivals get a chance to reset their boards – and the first few picks of the second round, after clubs have had 24 hours to consider their options.

Here’s more on the NBA draft:

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