“The fact that this top prospect in the 2020 NBA draft decided to say ‘actually I want to have private workouts, I want to be by myself’ I think is a huge red flag and it’s a major concern for people who have concerns about the NCAA losing its relevancy in today’s basketball culture,” Williams said.
Wiseman, who was previously suspended for 12 games by the NCAA, made his decision to end his season and prepare for the NBA draft via an Instagram post. “Today I formally withdrew from the University of Memphis and I will be preparing for the next chapter of my life,” Wiseman wrote.
The NCAA suspended Wiseman after just two games because they discovered that Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway, who was considered a booster because he gave a $1 million donation to the school in 2008, had given money to Wiseman’s mother to help with moving expenses.
A post shared by James Wiseman (@bigticket_j13) on Dec 19, 2019 at 11:41am PST
Williams added that Wiseman’s decision is worse for the NCAA than the popular “one and done” problem, in which players go to college for one year and then immediately enter the NBA draft. “For a league that people say it’s the NBA one and done rule that hurts it, no it isn’t,” Williams said. “It’s better than none and done—at least you have them there for one year.”
Despite the shocking decision, Wiseman is not the only player who has decided to forego college and find a different path to the NBA. Like Wiseman, two other high draft prospects, LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton, have avoided college and will enter the 2020 NBA draft.
Ball was previously committed to UCLA, but in his junior year of high school, he decided to withdraw and went to play professionally in Lithuania. Ball then signed a deal with the Illawarra Hawks, which is a part of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL). Despite his unusual basketball career, Ball is projected to be drafted number one overall in 2020, according to ESPN.
In May of this year, Hampton signed a multiyear deal with another team in the NBL, the New Zealand Breakers. According to ESPN, Hampton is projected to be the seventh overall pick in the upcoming NBA draft.
Wiseman’s decision took the college basketball world by storm, but it did not affect his draft stock—he remains the projected number three pick in the 2020 NBA draft.
