Former KU All-Americans Udoka Azubuike and Devon Dotson now know when they will find out their NBA fate.
According to a report from ESPN.com’s Adrian Wojnarowki, the NBA settled on two key dates for the 2020 draft process during its Thursday vote to restart the 2019-20 season.
Wojnarowski reported that sources told him that his year’s draft will be held Oct. 15 and that the order for the draft’s lottery will be drawn on Aug. 25.
It remains to be seen if the draft will be a live event or conducted online like the NFL did in late April.
The Oct. 15 draft date is roughly four months later than the draft typically takes place. This year’s draft was scheduled for June 25 in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The NBA has preserved its tradition of having the draft on a Thursday night.
The 2020 draft will follow an offseason that included the cancelation of the pre-draft combine and individual workouts in May because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
There figures to be some sort of time frame in which teams will be able to host draft prospects for interviews and workouts, but those details have not yet been revealed.
Other than adding to the antsy vibe of having to wait even longer to find out where their basketball careers will take them next, the new dates do not figure to have a major impact on Azubuike and Dotson.
If anything, the extra time between the end of the 2019-20 college hoops season and Azubuike and Dotson’s auditions for the NBA will give their bodies time to fully recover and recharge from the grind of the season.
Azubuike has spent the past couple of months in Lawrence, working out on his own and waiting for the post-pandemic future to become clearer.
Dotson went back to Charlotte with his family shortly after the NCAA Tournament was canceled in March and has been working out on his own back home.
Both are projected to be selected in this year’s draft and, depending on who you talk to, each player has a shot of getting into the first round.
Jonathan Givony’s most recent mock draft at ESPN.com has Azubuike being picked with the No. 31 overall selection (first pick of the second round) and Dotson being taken one pick behind him at No. 32.
NBA has set an August 25 Draft Lottery and October 15 Draft, sources say.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 4, 2020
