Nojel Eastern declaring without an agent. Can't imagine there is any chance, so no harm. To be honest, why doesn't every player on every team do this?
Yeah, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. In fact, though, Eastern is a perfect example of why this rule will probably be changed. Eastern has NO shot at the draft this year. None. His game is NOWHERE near ready.
Carsen Edwards, if he went, would probably be a 2nd rounder this year, but we're expecting him to return to Purdue as long as he doesn't hear he's a 1st-rounder. He's not only IMHO asking scouts what to work on, he's legitimately testing the waters to see where he'd go. I think it's probably a 10-15% chance at best that he gets feedback that keeps him in the draft, but that's 10-15% higher odds than Nojel has.
Now, I can understand why some players may not do it. There are a lot of players at the college level who basically have no shot at EVER playing in the NBA, and perhaps they know it. If they don't have the size and athleticism, an NBA scout might tell them how to work on their skills, but he can't exactly tell them "grow 3 inches and add 9 inches to your vertical, while improving your lateral quickness."
Eastern is doing this because he does have NBA size and athleticism. His game is raw, and he's nowhere near ready for the NBA, but given that he's got the potential to be there in a few years, it makes perfect sense to get an evaluation and find out what you need to work on.
But I think the rule will probably be changed at some point because as more and more players try to take advantage of this, the NBA scouts are going to get sick and tired of it and not want all these players coming just for free evaluations.
