13 of the most ill-timed NBA Draft early entry decisions

For this look at NBA Draft early entry mistakes, we’re looking strictly at draft-day results.

The first question we pondered is this: Was the player drafted far lower than he expected, or not chosen at all? And the second question is this: Could the player have increased his draft stock by staying in school another year?

That second question is where we cut out some names you might have expected to see. College standouts such as Khalid El-Amin (34th overall in 2000), Scotty Thurman (undrafted, 1995) and Andrew and Aaron Harrison (44th and undrafted, respectively, in 2015) left school before their eligibility expired and entered draft day hoping to be first-round picks, but would another season really have helped their draft stock? It’s doubtful, so they’re not on this list. 

On the other end of the spectrum, players such as Washington’s Spencer Hawes, UNC’s Marvin Williams and LSU’s Anthony Randolph probably could have become more NBA-ready players with another year in college, but those guys went 10th, 2nd and 14th overall, respectively, so it’s hard to say they made a mistake by choosing to enter the draft when they did (even if that decision might have hindered their development as a player to some extent). 

First-round picks get guaranteed deals, which means a team feels the player is worth the time, cost and effort of developing the player. For the most part, it validates the decision to enter the draft. 

Second-round picks start their career at a disadvantage, without a guaranteed contract or a spot on the roster. Look at the 2015 draft as an example: Of the 20 second-round picks who played college basketball, nobody played more than 52 games or averaged more than 22 minutes a game. Only eight of those 20 even played more than 16 games.

Make sense? Cool. Let's jump in. 

Stephenson slid all the way to the second round, then spent his first two years in the league making the league minimum and playing sparingly. He did eventually become an impact player in the league in his fourth season, of course, and earned a sizeable free agent contract, but he could have jumpstarted that salary with a better college showing and a higher spot in the draft. 

Instead of waiting to see what the NCAA’s possible discipline/suspension would have been, Alexander declared for the draft. He didn’t hear his name called. He signed as an undrafted free agent with Portland and played eight games for the Trail Blazers in the 2015-16 season.