<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">The father of the most intriguing NBA free agent in years sounded somewhat startled to hear of the sudden scramble surrounding his son. No one in the pros has called Ralph Morris about his kid Randolph at the University of Kentucky, but rest assured, the junior's status has sent several franchises searching for a simple answer to a complicated question. Do we have a shot to sign Randolph Morris right now? "As far as I know, he's not entertaining any thoughts of leaving Kentucky during the season," Ralph Morris said by phone from his Atlanta home on Sunday. Since the start of the college basketball season, several NBA teams closely have studied the unusual circumstance surrounding Randolph Morris. They've made calls, asked around to agents and kept checking with sources to make sure no one else was beating them to a contract offer.</div> Source Can some one explain this to me? From what I understand, he was in the 2005 draft, went undrafted, and now hes back at College and doing pretty well for Kentucky, but I was always under the impression that once you declared for the draft, then that was it, you couldnt go back to college, you just became a free agent or went over to Europe, the D League etc. So why is it that he's back in college? and how come he is now eligble to just be signed as a free agent?
IIRC you can declare for the draft, but if you didn't get an agent you were still eligible to play in the NCAA.
<div class="quote_poster">NTC187 Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Source Can some one explain this to me? From what I understand, he was in the 2005 draft, went undrafted, and now hes back at College and doing pretty well for Kentucky, but I was always under the impression that once you declared for the draft, then that was it, you couldnt go back to college, you just became a free agent or went over to Europe, the D League etc. So why is it that he's back in college? and how come he is now eligble to just be signed as a free agent?</div> Yeah, you can go back to college if you didn't sign an agent yet. I don't understand being able to just get signed though.
I had to explain this to my brother earlier. Essentially, if you don't put your name in the final draft pool, you can go back. However, in order to have your name in there on draft day, you HAVE to have an agent. Initially, if you're not confident enough, you don't have to have one, you just end up paying for workouts yourself and in general just represent yourself. If you have an agent, they do all that stuff for you. But, if you want to have your name in the draft pool on draft day, you have to have an agent. Once that happens, there's no going back. This same thing happened to Darius Washington Jr. this past summer.
I understand being able to take your name out of the draft, and head back to college if you didn't sign an agent, but since when is an NBA team allowed to sign a player from college during the season?