Potential No. 1 overall pick Joel Embiid has made it official — he has entered his name into the NBA draft after one year at Kansas.
The Jayhawks’ seven-foot center averaged 11.2 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game in his freshman campaign. Embiid’s stock was on the rise before an injury forced him to miss the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.
Despite the injury, Embiid remains in contention to be the first player taken off the board, along with Duke’s Jabari Parker and teammate Andrew Wiggins, though at the beginning of the season that certainly was not the case. Embiid’s jumped onto NBA teams’ draft boards due to his scoring ability and defensive prowess.
“His ceiling is ridiculously high,” Kansas coach Bill Self told the Kansas City Star in reference to Embiid’s potential.
Embiid, Parker and Wiggins will likely be the top three players taken come June’s draft. Embiid is ranked third on ESPN Insider Chad Ford’s Big Board and projected to go second overall in Draft Express’ latest mock draft.
Projected to go fourth in that same mock draft is Kentucky’s Julius Randle, whose NBA status remains up in the air. Reports surfaced Wednesday that Randle was declaring for the draft, but on Thursday both he and his mother denied that a decision had been made yet.
Idk who reported what but I haven’t made up my mind about the draft yet. Haven’t even talked to my family about it. So it’s all false.
— Julius Randle (@J30_RANDLE) April 9, 2014
The 6-foot-9 power forward averaged a team-leading 15.0 points and 10.4 rebounds per game for the Wildcats, who came up short against Connecticut in the national title game Monday night. Kentucky’s run in the NCAA Tournament helped improve Randle’s stock. Randle did a bit of everything for the team — from scoring to rebounding to taking over games — which bodes well for his professional game.
Randle has until April 27, the NBA’s early entry deadline, to declare. If he submits his name and doesn’t hire an agent, he can opt to remove his name from the list by April 15 and remain eligible at Kentucky.
