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NCAA Adds New Requirements for Agents

The NCAA has added requirements for agents who intend to represent underclassmen basketball players who are testing their stock in the NBA Draft.

Agents will now need a bachelor’s degree, certification from the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) for at least three years and passing an in-person exam at the NCAA Headquarters in Indianapolis, among other criteria.


These restrictions only apply to players who enter the draft within the allotted window the NCAA created in 2016, giving underclassmen the ability to declare for the draft without automatically forfeiting their eligibility. Players who have no intentions of returning to college basketball may still use any agent, as well as any players who have already given up their amateur status by becoming a professional prior to entering the draft.

In a memo uncovered by The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie, the NCAA explained the reasoning for its decision as “protecting the eligibility of their client athletes.”

The widespread speculation is that this is in response to Rich Paul, LeBron James’s agent and founder of Klutch Sports Group, who does not have a bachelor’s degree. Paul met James when he was 21 and the player was still in high school. Paul was selling jerseys out of the truck of his car at the Akron-Canton Airport.

Joe Drape of The New York Times told the story in 2014.

“James, captivated by Paul’s Warren Moon throwback jersey, asked where he got it. It turned out that Paul was selling jerseys out of the trunk of his car and was going to Atlanta to buy more. He gave James his connection in Atlanta, and he told him to drop his name for a discount, and then went on his way …

“When James returned from Atlanta, he called Paul to thank him, and they had the first of many long conversations, which deepened into a friendship and eventually an intertwined future.

“‘We hit it off instantly,’ James said. ‘Every time I was doing something, I’d call Rich and ask if he can make it, and he’d say, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and he was.'”

The NCAA’s new rules would make it much less likely for the same situation to unfold for future players, and James and several other former and current NBA players have voiced negative opinions of the new rules.

There are possible legal arguments against these criteria as a violation of antitrust law, which Michael McCann of Sports Illustrated outlined Tuesday.

“Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits competing businesses from conspiring in ways that unreasonably interfere with competition,” he wrote. “Section 1 is intended to limit opportunities for competing businesses to combine their economic power to the detriment of the marketplace. In this context, the ‘competing businesses’ are the more than 1,200 schools, conferences and affiliated organizations that comprise the NCAA.”

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