OT: Kentucky's entire hoops team declares for NBA draft

1. What is to prevent all players, or most players, or a majority of players, or even a lot more players from doing this? The more players that declare, the less accurate the evaluations become. The less work is put into individual evaluations, the more range is applied to each evaluation, the worse it gets. This likely leads to more kids declaring based on a less accurate evaluation of their potential. That hurts the kids, it hurts the coaches, it hurts the teams, and especially it potentially hurts recruits that have mostly already wrapped up their recruitment and the coaches trying to figure out how to recruit (i.e. it leads to oversigning).

2. These are still considered "student"-athletes, regardless of the debate about how much they are students and how much they are athletes. But more time dedicated away from their school and school's team, and focused on the evaluation process (I'd assume the evaluation, not to mention potentially the combine, is more than just evaluators watching film) are much less focused on school, even more than they would be. There really isn't an argument like the spring break argument that it actually helps the players out as students. This only puts more weight on them solely being "athletes", which doesn't work in the NCAA's favor.

I think 1) is a valid concern. This rule is intended for borderline players. But the NCAA can't determine who is borderline, and the pro evaluators don't have a hand in that until after their evaluation. So everyone goes unless there is some insentive not to go. The easiest way to give that insentive is to apply some sort of rule that prevents people that likely aren't borderline from being evaluated, such as only allowing them to be evaluated and come back once, rather than 3 or 4 times. That's why I'd bet the NCAA tweeks the rule going forward so that this doesn't start happening.

if the entire team declares? The rule is still the same and you still have to be invited to the pre-draft combine. You think the NBA is really going to waste their time evaluating UK walk-ons? Grow up Peter Pan. Count Chocula.

On March 21, Burke submitted himself for evaluation by the NBA Draft Advisory Council. The deadline for entering the NBA draft was April 29, but the deadline for withdrawing a declaration and retaining NCAA eligibility was April 10. On April 9, Burke announced he would return to Michigan for his sophomore season instead of staying in the NBA draft.

The "loophole" is not new at all.