If the new deadline were in place this year, Missouri's Kim English, Michigan's Darius Morris and Pitt's Ashton Gibbs would have been forced to make up their minds by April 12.
The NBA does not even require players to enter the draft until April 24, and the final draft order won’t be set for nearly a month.
“Testing the waters” used to be a legitimate exercise for college players with professional aspirations. Now, if they get a splash of that water on their sneakers they’ll be gone from college for good.
The coaches from the Atlantic Coast Conference pushed for the change of the NBA’s withdrawal deadline for early entrants, which had allowed players to consider their options until 10 days before the draft, to the early May deadline that was in place in 2010 and will be again this year. The ACC again backed this new proposal, supposedly so the colleges could have some degree of certainty regarding future rosters.