Syracuse Orange men’s basketball: the new NBA CBA will mean the draft waiting

Judah Mintz’s recent draft withdrawal decision is only the beginning…

• By
  
  Dominic Chiappone
  
• on July 7, 2023 10:00 am

With hours to go to formally withdrawal from the NBA Draft, Syracuse Orange fans stayed on the edge of their seats, hoped and waited for an announcement from freshman phenom Judah Mintz.

As fans relentlessly double-checked Twitter to see if Mintz would either return to Syracuse for his sophomore year or opt to stay in the 2023 draft by the deadline of 11:59 p.m. on May 31. Eventually, Mintz announced his decision to continue his playing career with the Orange, but not without Syracuse fans going through an agonizing process of waiting… and waiting… and waiting some more.

Mintz wasn’t the only college basketball player to wait until the clock struck midnight. In fact, he was far from it. College basketball continues to evolve as players gain greater autonomy in their futures. Up to this point, the recent trend has impacted how coaches like Adrian Autry manage their rosters and prioritize recruitment efforts. Ditto for the transfer portal, as more college players have significant control over their destiny now more than ever within the NCAA.

What Syracuse fans experienced with Mintz’s decision will not be going away anytime soon, as Jon Rothstein hinted:

The most consequential factor behind all this chaos is the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement, a 676-page document outlining all of the employment conditions agreed upon between the league and its players. The new CBA is loaded with updated terms which directly impact how college players like Mintz will determine their future playing careers.

To keep a long story short, the main objective of the new agreement seeks to incentivize lower-spending teams to pay more and higher-spending teams to cut costs. If the latter fails to do so, it leads to a laundry list of restrictions on trading, draft picks and adding players.

Simply put, expensive teams are looking to add cheap, ready-now contributors on rookie-scale contracts. Christian Braun, the 21st pick in the 2022 Draft, played a critical role for the Denver Nuggets in their championship run. With these new caps on spending, major-market teams are using the draft to bring in younger players at a discounted price.

If you saw you this year’s draft, you might have noticed lots of movement towards the bottom of the first round and most of the second round. Denver traded first round picks in 2024 and 2029 to add three second round selections in this year’s draft. The Minnesota Timberwolves dealt out two future second rounders to get the 33rd pick; the same goes for the Boston Celtics, who traded down three different times alone.

All three of…