didn\u2019t get cleared to play until the 17th game of the 2023-24 season<\/a>. \u201cAfter that, man, it was like everybody wanted to come over.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd then there was the belief that college basketball wasn\u2019t the best pathway for top international players\u2019 development. Phillip Parun, an agent for Octagon, has often posed the question to college coaches: Which European players went to college and then made the NBA? He can list most of the recent examples off the top of his head \u2014 Sabonis, Lauri Markkanen, Svi Mykhailiuk, the Wagner brothers, Jeremy Sochan, Killian Tillie.<\/p>\n
Now compare that to the number of international players selected in the last 10 NBA Drafts who did not go the college route: 92. (Thirty-four of those players have yet to play a minute in the NBA.)<\/p>\n
Valentin Le Clezio, an agent with Wasserman, says it\u2019s still best for players who are a year or two away from getting drafted to stay abroad. \u201cCollege coaches are the best liars on the planet, so you always want to minimize the risk,\u201d Le Clezio said.<\/p>\n
But that line of thinking could change if imports enjoy the kind of success that Kasparas Jaku\u010dionis and Egor Demin just experienced in their one-and-done college seasons.<\/p>\n
Jaku\u010dionis played with FC Barcelona\u2019s second team last year, appearing in just one EuroLeague game for the club\u2019s top team. After earning second-team All-Big Ten honors at Illinois, he\u2019s projected to be a lottery pick this June. Demin starred for Real Madrid\u2019s Under-18 team in 2023-24. After one year at BYU, he\u2019s also projected to go in the first round.<\/p>\n
Le Clezio estimates that between 60 to 80 college programs were represented at the Under-18 European Championships last summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you watch a game before (at those events), there was only one or two guys on each team that were high-major players that were going to go to college,\u201d Michigan coach Dusty May said. \u201cNow the entire team is open to college if the situation\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Underwood said Illinois keeps a scouting database with just about every player in every age group overseas.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow with the money, everybody has interest,\u201d Le Clezio said. \u201cEverybody feels like we can get the best kids here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Relationships still matter, but NIL offers can close the gap, and international players do not care as much about a school\u2019s name recognition.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times over here, some guys are a little scatterbrained on what\u2019s important to them, whether it\u2019s style of play, location, whatever,\u201d said Florida coach Todd Golden, who just won the national championship with a starting power forward from Australia, a Nigerian center and a Slovenian guard coming off the bench. \u201cWhereas (international) guys are coming over strictly to focus on basketball and being part of a program where they feel like they can grow and get better. There\u2019s a little less of bells and whistles in their recruiting process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Petrovi\u0107 and David Mirkovic didn\u2019t even visit Illinois before committing. Underwood was in Serbia last week watching Petrovi\u0107 play live for the first time.<\/p>\n
As the college option becomes more enticing, pro teams abroad feel mostly helpless in the fight to retain talent. EuroLeague sports directors \u2014 the analog to general managers in American sports \u2014 are frustrated to be losing rotation players to the college ranks.<\/p>\n
Some of these breakups have been very public. Dame Sarr, who was in the rotation for FC Barcelona, one of the top clubs in Europe, traveled to the Nike Hoops Summit in Portland last month without his club\u2019s approval. Sarr and FC Barcelona eventually agreed to part ways, and he\u2019s expected to eventually sign with a college team. (He has long been linked with Duke and recently visited Kansas.)<\/p>\n
Other recruitments are happening in the shadows. Take Elias Rapieque, a 21-year-old forward for Alba Berlin who grew up playing for its junior team, averaged 15 minutes per game during EuroLeague play this year and is currently helping Alba Berlin try to qualify for the Basketball Bundesliga playoffs. Alba Berlin sports director Himar Ojeda says he found out during the middle of this season that Rapieque was being recruited by colleges.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter how much I like the youngest guy and how much I\u2019m willing to play him, it\u2019s unrealistic that I can pay this guy nothing close by far. By far!\u201d Ojeda said. \u201cSo there\u2019s no way we can compete. No one can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Russian-born point guard Egor Demin, who spent last season at BYU, is a likely first-round pick. (Isaiah J. Downing \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Bringing some of the best young international talent to college basketball is great for college basketball, but is it good for the overall health of the game worldwide? Similar to NIL and the transfer portal, this is a development the NCAA wasn\u2019t exactly ready for.<\/p>\n
As far back as February 2024, NCAA officials, conference commissioners, USA Basketball and representatives from FIBA have discussed how to create a clearer transaction process for players who are leaving teams in Europe to come play college basketball. In the current framework, most players are able to get out of their contract because they can say they\u2019re leaving for academic reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is they\u2019re not going there for academic reasons; they\u2019re going because they will get a nice chunk of money on top of a good basketball development,\u201d says Thorsten Leibenath, the sports director for Ratiopharm Ulm in Germany.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a disruption to the system for these professional franchises, which use their youth programs to develop their own talent. Omer Mayer, an 18-year-old guard from Tel Aviv, Israel, was one of those players. Mayer was the best young prospect in Maccabi Tel Aviv\u2019s system, who started in the youth program when he was 12 and played in EuroLeague games each of the last three seasons. Even, the club\u2019s former sports director, says Mayer was the \u201cnext face of the club\u201d \u2014 but last month he committed to Purdue.<\/p>\n
Had Mayer left for another club in Europe or stayed with Maccabi Tel Aviv and eventually been drafted, his next club would have been required to pay Maccabi Tel Aviv for his transfer. The current rate for an NBA franchise is $875,000. Some franchises will choose to wait out a player\u2019s contract overseas so that it\u2019s not required to pay the buyout, a \u201cdraft and stash\u201d tactic especially popular for second-round picks. Mayer was able to get out of his contract to go to Purdue by paying a small buyout, the amount of which was added to his agreed-upon amount with Purdue\u2019s collective. If he does one day get drafted, Maccabi Tel Aviv will not receive a dime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where European teams struggle,\u201d Leibenath said. \u201cAnd this is where you would have to ask the question, why do we do this if we continue to not get any kind of revenue out of that or at least compensation? There\u2019s nothing in it for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parun has proposed what he thinks could be the solution: The international club loans their players out, retains their rights and gets a small percentage of a player\u2019s earnings while on loan, a system similar to the one soccer has internationally. Leibenath believes FIBA needs to be involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my eyes colleges nowadays are run like pro teams,\u201d Leibenath said. \u201cThey pay their players like pro teams. They make revenue like pro teams. If you consider them pro teams, it would make life a lot easier.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would also benefit everyone involved if the NCAA would adjust the wording of its requirement that only amateurs are eligible. As it stands, the organization has found policing the gray area difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople know now I think even more so than they did obviously two or three or five years ago, if you can produce documentation that only shows that an athlete only received actual necessary expenses, that\u2019s basically all you need,\u201d said a former NCAA employee, given anonymity so he could speak with candor on how the process really works.\u00a0\u201cIf there\u2019s no other conflicting materials or anyone that can go on the record that has any type of real evidence to show that the club did anything improper, then it\u2019s just a matter of time getting through the system that that kid is eligible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without subpoena power, the NCAA is rendered helpless in these cases. And why even try when college basketball players are now making money like professionals?<\/p>\n
\u201cFive years ago, none of these guys were getting eligible,\u201d McDermott said. \u201cThere was no chance, but because of everything that\u2019s happened in our sport and in college athletics, it\u2019s really hard to stand firm I think on some of those reasons why guys wouldn\u2019t be eligible that have signed pro contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new challenge: How to determine how much college eligibility these players have. The current guide is that a player\u2019s year in school is determined by his graduation date. Once a prospect overseas graduates high school, he has a gap year and then he must start studying as his eligibility clock begins. Creighton\u2019s Fedor Zugic, for instance, joined the Jays last year as a 21-year-old and was ruled a college senior because he had more than one gap year due to some commitments with his national team; he has filed for another year of eligibility.<\/p>\n
Purdue coach Matt Painter, who has served on the NCAA\u2019s oversight committee and the National Association of Basketball Coaches board, sees an easy solution to the eligibility side. He has recommended to the NCAA that anyone college-aged should be eligible.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if they\u2019ve been a pro and they\u2019ve signed, who cares now?\u201d Painter said. \u201cThey\u2019re all pros. Everybody\u2019s getting paid in name, image and likeness. So what\u2019s the difference in having a contract overseas?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd is one of the experts in this field, because he\u2019s been recruiting overseas for multiple decades, first as an assistant at Gonzaga and now as the head coach at Arizona. At both places, he\u2019s had players who are immediately successful and some who need a year or two to adjust.<\/p>\n
Rui Hachimura, for instance, arrived from Japan and played only 4.6 minutes per game as a freshman at Gonzaga. As a junior, he was a second-team All-American and went ninth in the 2019 NBA Draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the key to making it work, like anything, is being 100 percent committed,\u201d Lloyd said. \u201cUnderstanding that it\u2019s not always going to work. You can\u2019t take one shot, because there\u2019s lots of reasons kids don\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2025-26 season could be an inflection point for a lot of college coaches, who will either try to get in on the trend if it works out for the schools at its forefront or tread carefully because of high-profile misses.<\/p>\n
Zlovari\u0107 is betting on the former. Last month, he was on the stage with Florida after the Gators won the national championship with one of their clients, Urban Klavzar, on the roster. Klavzar was just a backup, averaging 3.2 points per game, but Alex Condon, from Australia, was a key starter. He trained at the NBA Global Academy, which has long been sending some of its best players to American college.<\/p>\n
But most of the top Europeans have been off-limits, and the real eye-opener will be when a team wins a national title with an NBA-bound European prospect as one of its stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s going to happen next year, or if not next year, it is gonna happen after that,\u201d Zlovari\u0107 says. \u201c(Recruiting) Europeans is becoming mainstream. And the whole mindset is shifting where now, like, \u2018Hey, why would I just only look at a St. John\u2019s transfer if there is a guy out there that used to not be available but is available to me now and he\u2019s just as good, if not better? Why would I not go get it?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cUp until this point, the most talented went to the draft in the NBA, and the second tier, they went to EuroLeague and somewhere in Europe. But now it\u2019s completely changed, obviously, in the approach. Because now, like everybody, we are 100 percent open.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Photo: Michael Reaves \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mi\u0161ko Ra\u017enatovi\u0107 went to his first Final Four in April. A few years ago, the trip to college…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,3294,217,10412,950,4250,7367,3075,354,231,772,1544,10413,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-34458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-byu-cougars","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-davidson-wildcats","12":"tag-florida-gators","13":"tag-gonzaga-bulldogs","14":"tag-illinois-fighting-illini","15":"tag-kentucky-wildcats","16":"tag-mens-college-basketball","17":"tag-ncaa","18":"tag-ncaa-basketball","19":"tag-ncaab","20":"tag-saint-marys-gaels","21":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114511353583413571","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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