Key dates for NBA offseason come into focus as early entry window set

Potential draft targets of the Celtics now know when they can join the early entry class of prospects to gauge their odds of being taken.

The contours of the NBA offseason are beginning to come into view, with ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reporting the league has set dates for the 2020 NBA Draft, as well as early entry and withdrawal dates for participating prospects.

Those dates will be as follows: October 16th for the draft itself (pushed back from an earlier date set for October 15th), August 17th the early entry date, and October 6th for the withdrawal date for any prospects who have had second thoughts about retaining their NCAA eligibility.

The early entry program allows fringe prospects to attend NBA pre-draft camps and individual team workouts to gauge team interest and get valuable feedback on what needs work in their games without losing NCAA eligibility so long as they hire no agent.

As with much of the NBA calendar, the usual schedule for the program had been upended by the pandemic hiatus, so this information is a big help for prospects trying to remain (or improve) conditioning on their own ahead of such events.

Depending on how (or if) the 2020 NBA Combine is conducted due to restrictions placed on it out of concern for the pandemic, such a process could be limited to remote or in-person interviews, depending on the state of the pandemic by these dates.

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