Monday, July 2, 2007

Yi can't re-enter the draft next year

Thanks to Henry Abbott for foraging out this bit of info about the Collective Bargaining Agreement: since Yi is currently under contract to a non-NBA team (the Guangdong Tigers), he's already ineligible to go back into next year's draft. He'd have to spend a year without the Tigers contract first, and it's too late to do that for next year.

So, if he doesn't want to play in Milwaukee they can hold out until the 2009 draft. Would he be willing to do the same?

1 comment:

Swo said...

Just heard Chad Ford on local radio about Yi and he seemed to think that The Bucks underestimated the will of the Chinese Basketball Federation. He was basically saying that without them, the Bucks would win this - but they are the wildcard because they could basically say "no" and have Yi wait two years.

He also said that the Bucks drafted Yi like any other player while Houston, when drafting Yao, went waaaay out of their way to accommodate him and roll out the red carpet and do all this cultural stuff. Chad thought that the Bucks better get on doing that stuff ASAP before it is too late.