Only a few months ago, James Nnaji faced a career crossroads.
A Summer League audition with the New York Knicks hadn’t produced so much as an invitation to training camp, let alone his first NBA contract.
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Since the salaries top college players were making dwarfed what Nnaji could earn overseas, the Nigerian 7-footer and his agent hatched an audacious plan. They began to explore the unprecedented possibility of going from the 31st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft at 18 to entering college basketball at 21.
Desperate for a big man after losing its projected starting center to a season-ending arm injury during the summer, Baylor targeted Nnaji as soon as he became available and began working to try to get the NCAA to clear him to play. Nnaji made his collegiate debut in Baylor’s Big 12 opener at TCU this past Saturday, checking in eight minutes into the first half to an onslaught of jeers and boos.
Granting Nnaji immediate eligibility is the most extreme example yet of the NCAA’s reluctance to fight to keep professional players out of the college game. The NCAA had previously given colleges the greenlight to recruit prospects with experience playing in the G League or top overseas professional leagues. Now the governing body is also rolling out the red carpet for someone who once guarded Victor Wembanyama in a Summer League game, someone who was once a throw-in in the trade that shipped Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks.
“It’s wild out there right now,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few told reporters last week.
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“We don’t have any rules,” Arkansas coach John Calipari lamented during a recent news conference.
“Santa Claus is delivering mid-season acquisitions,” UConn coach Dan Hurley quipped on social media. “This s— is crazy!!”
Just when many joked Arizona might want to reach out to LeBron James about playing alongside his son Bryce next season, NCAA president Charlie Baker at last drew a firm line. The NCAA will not grant college eligibility to any player who has previously signed an NBA contract, Baker clarified in a statement last Tuesday.
Why has the NCAA loosened eligibility restrictions to the point where such a commonsense statement is necessary?
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Is the risk of exposing itself to fresh legal challenges really the main reason for the NCAA’s hesitance to try to enforce stricter rules? Or might the NCAA have an ulterior motive? Could it be intentionally trying to spark public outrage in hopes of persuading Congress to finally grant antitrust protection that would reestablish the NCAA’s authority and shield it from the threat of litigation?
As Mit Winter, an experienced attorney specializing in collegiate sports law, told Yahoo Sports, “I don’t go the full conspiracy theory that the NCAA is making all these eligibility decisions for the sole reason of creating mass chaos so that Congress comes to help, but it’s definitely a side benefit of what’s going on.”
James Nnaji scored five points in his debut with Baylor in what turned out to be a loss to TCU. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
(Ron Jenkins via Getty Images)
The NCAA tries to toe a fine line
Not long after highly touted center Enes Kanter committed to Kentucky in early 2010, the NCAA received a set of documents from his former Turkish club.
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Officials at Fenerbahce were unhappy with Kanter’s abrupt departure after they had invested heavily in his development. As a result, they turned over financial records to the NCAA purportedly showing that Fenerbahce had provided the projected lottery pick payments that would jeopardize his amateur status.
On Nov. 11, 2010, the NCAA declared Kanter permanently ineligible to play college basketball for receiving benefits $33,033 above what the governing body deemed his “actual and necessary expenses.” The ruling epitomized how tightly the NCAA clung to a strict concept of amateurism before legal challenges dismantled the system.
The Supreme Court struck a deathblow to amateurism in June 2021 when it unanimously ruled that the NCAA’s restrictions on compensation for student-athletes were a violation of federal antitrust law. The landmark decision in NCAA v. Alston paved the way for the modern NIL and revenue-sharing era and left the NCAA’s model vulnerable to further legal challenges.
“Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion in NCAA v. Alston. He concluded by sharply noting, “The NCAA is not above the law.”
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As the NIL market for impact basketball players at the high-major level skyrocketed north of seven figures, the best young international prospects began to take notice. Teenagers who might have chosen to develop abroad in previous eras left their high-level European club teams and jetted across the Atlantic because the salaries were as much as 10 to 15 times more lucrative.
Skilled 7-footers Zvonimir Ivisic of Croatia, Aday Mara of Spain and Motiejus Krivas of Lithuania were part of the initial wave of prized European prospects in 2023. A year later, future NBA first-round draft picks Egor Demin and Kasparas Jakučionis joined them. This year, 19-year-old German forward Hannes Steinbach is passing through Washington on his way to the NBA, as is Italian guard Dame Sarr, 19, at Duke and Greek guard Neoklis Avdalas, 19, at Virginia Tech.
“There used to be a small number of top [European] prospects that would consider the college route,” said Guillermo Bermejo, European-based director of global basketball at Gersh Sports, the agency that represents Nnaji. “It was a rarity for a player to choose that route versus staying pro and developing over here. Now the rarity is someone staying over here versus going to college. When you’re sitting down with a player and his family, the first thing that comes up is the college route, how it works and how to get there. It has been a 180-degree change.”
Last offseason, the influx of European pros entering the college game went from a trickle to a deluge. College coaches became more brazen about targeting international players with several years experience competing in the Euroleague or top professional domestic leagues.
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Virginia’s leading scorer this season is a 22-year-old Belgian forward who was a key contributor for a professional club in Spain’s top division the previous two years. Louisville’s top big man is a 22-year-old German who last season was one of the Bundesliga’s most efficient players. North Carolina starts a 22-year-old guard from Montenegro who averaged 14.9 points per game in Southeastern Europe’s top league.
The NCAA’s lenience in granting those players college eligibility tempted other programs to test the limits of the governing body’s generosity. They targeted G League players who had once passed on the college route but now were having regrets due to the money available.
In late September, Santa Clara announced the signing of guard Thierry Darlan, who spent the previous two years with the now-defunct G League Ignite, the Delaware Blue Coats and the Rip City Remix. A month later, Louisville landed guard London Johnson out of the G League. Westchester Knicks center Abdullah Ahmed signed with BYU in November and just made his midseason debut this past Saturday against Kansas State.
How are these G Leaguers and European pros eligible when Kanter and others in his position once were not? Because, since the onset of the NIL era, the NCAA has been more forgiving in its interpretation of Bylaw 12.2.2.2.1, which states that “before initial full-time collegiate enrollment, an individual may compete on a professional team provided the individual does not receive more than actual and necessary expenses.”
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Without protection from antitrust laws, the NCAA doesn’t appear interested in trying to legally defend banning players who have received five-figure or six-figure salaries from professional teams. The NCAA, as Baker recently put it, “is exercising discretion in applying the actual and necessary expenses bylaw.” International pros who were paid more than what the NCAA deems actual and necessary expenses have allegedly been able to get eligible by paying back the difference.
“I think it’s a strategy to manage legal risk in this new world,” said antitrust law specialist Sabria McElroy, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. “It’s becoming harder for the NCAA to defend eligibility restraints. They might have decided to allow these exemptions rather than open themselves up to more litigation challenges as they continue to hope that Congress will step in and do something.”
Recent statements from the NCAA seem to confirm as much.
In October, NCAA senior vice president Tim Buckley told Yahoo Sports that the NCAA’s ability to enforce “commonsense” eligibility and transfer rules is “currently under attack in courts across the country.”
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“This is why we’re focused on partnering with Congress,” Buckley added.
NCAA president Charlie Baker is up against the toughest challenge the organization has ever faced. (Photo by Porter Binks/Getty Images).
(Porter Binks via Getty Images)
Congress to the rescue?
Congress is indeed the one entity with the power to swoop in and restore the NCAA’s ability to make rules and enforce them, but persuading legislators to provide an antitrust exemption will not be an easy feat in this political climate. Any potential bill would have to pass a staunchly divided House of Representatives, clear the 60-vote benchmark in the Senate and secure a signature from the President.
In July, the players associations in North America’s five major professional sports released a joint statement strongly urging Congress not to provide the NCAA any legal liability shield. “Granting an antitrust exemption to the NCAA and its members,” the statement argued, “gives the green light for the organization and schools to collude and work against student athletes.”
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So far the NCAA’s bid to craft a bill with bipartisan support has gone nowhere. House leaders canceled plans to vote on the NCAA-backed SCORE Act on Dec. 3 because it lacked sufficient support.
“The SCORE Act was pulled from consideration because it simply didn’t have the votes, a clear sign that Members on both sides saw it for what it was: a gift to the NCAA and Power Two conferences at the expense of athletes,” Rep. Lori Trahan (D–Mass), a former Division I volleyball player, said in a December 3 press release.
The broad scope of the SCORE Act has torpedoed the NCAA’s bid to secure congressional support, according to Jeffrey Kessler, one of the world’s leading sports law and antitrust attorneys. If the SCORE Act passed, it would provide antitrust protection to the NCAA when establishing eligibility rules, limiting player transfers and restricting NIL earnings. It would also declare that college athletes aren’t employees and that individual states can’t pass laws conflicting with the SCORE Act.
“It’s a complete overreach,” Kessler told Yahoo Sports. “They want everything, so they’re going to get nothing.”
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Are the NCAA’s recent player eligibility decisions a premeditated attempt to stoke anger and entice Congress to intervene?
“I’m not sure I completely buy the idea that it’s all a congressional lobbying play,” said Boise State professor Sam Ehrlich, an expert on the application of antitrust law to college sports. “That’s just one heck of a swing, and given how things have fared for them on Capitol Hill over the past five-plus years, it seems like a really bad gamble.”
But might the NCAA perceive the uproar as a welcome side benefit to its strategy to limit legal risk?
“I think they view it as helping them in Congress getting a law passed,” Winter said. “They’re saying look at what these courts are doing to our eligibility rules. We can’t keep pro athletes out of college sports anymore because of what the courts have done. Congress, we really need an antitrust exemption.”
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To Ehrlich, the theory that holds more weight is the idea that the NCAA is setting up the legal argument that there is no distinction anymore between professional and college basketball.
Athletes who file antitrust lawsuits must establish that the NCAA dominates a particular market before arguing that the NCAA is improperly restricting it. That argument becomes trickier if the NCAA can present college basketball as one option within the broader professional basketball market.
“The whole premise of these antitrust lawsuits is that the NCAA is a cartel, that the NCAA is dominating the market for amateur sports,” Ehrlich said. “If the NCAA leans into the current environment and says we’re not actually this distinct amateur sports entity anymore and we’re one of many leagues these players can play in, it gets a lot harder to show that the NCAA is restricting entrance into this broader market.”
The upside for the NCAA is it potentially maintains a legal argument to draw certain lines of governance.
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The downside to the NCAA’s apparent unwillingness to fight to keep international and domestic pros out of college basketball is that the organization now faces an uphill battle trying to legally defend the other lines it has already drawn.
If a player who received a six-figure salary in Spain can gain college eligibility, why can’t a player who made a cameo appearance in the NBA on a two-way deal? Or if Nnaji can enter the NBA Draft, be selected in the second round and play college basketball, why can’t a former college player who went through the draft process, didn’t get selected as early as he wanted and now wants to come back?
“Once you allow one exemption it becomes much harder to draw other lines, to stop players who have signed NBA contracts and things like that,” McElroy said.
Other attorneys echoed that stance.
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“If they’re going to say that signing an NBA contract is the line where you can’t come back, I think it’s going to be hard to defend that based on everything else that’s happening,” Winter said.
It’s a safe bet that some ambitious college coach will approach a fringe NBA player in his early 20s, offer him a seven-figure deal to play college basketball and then leave it up to the courts to assess the legality of NCAA rules forbidding that.
In fact those conversations are already happening.
College coaches have expressed interest to Bermejo in multiple European players on two-way deals.
“That’s just one more example of how they’re getting creative,” Bermejo said. “They want the best players and they’re open to possibilities they would have never thought about before.”
