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Message: [QUOTE="Whitey23, post: 1777213, member: 216"] [URL='http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/sports/ncaabasketball/nba-draft-college-basketball-players.html?ref=sports']College or the N.B.A? New Rule Gives Players More Time and Feedback[/URL] When guard Malachi Richardson walked off the elevated court at NRG Stadium in Houston after his Syracuse men’s basketball team lost to North Carolina in the Final Four in April, he spent the next two weeks not thinking about his future. “It wasn’t a rushed decision,” he said in an interview this month. “I had a lot of time.” Richardson said he went back to campus and concentrated on his classes. He worked out on his own time and, even though he was still a freshman, learned that he had been invited to the N.B.A. scouting combine. After performing well there, he signed with an agent, a point of no return in leaving college ball behind. Many mock drafts predict he will be selected in the first round next month. “I had to believe in myself, and the opportunity existed at the time, and I thought leaving school would be the best,” he said. Richardson not only was able to say he was testing the waters of professional basketball, but he was able to do it in a meaningful way without compromising his eligibility. Under an N.C.A.A. rule change, reached in cooperation with the N.B.A. and in use for the first time this year, the deadline for players to declare they were turning professional — and thus forfeiting their remaining college eligibility — was extended more than a month, and a new apparatus was put in place to give prospects feedback on their draft stock. In past years, any college basketball player with remaining eligibility effectively had to decide to turn pro by early April. Only then could he have participated in the scouting combine, worked out for teams and received a good sense of how N.B.A. front offices valued him. But if he fared poorly or was projected as a late pick, it was too late: His decision to leave college was final. [/QUOTE]

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