Duke basketball: Deadline is now set for NBA decisions

It might be several months before Duke basketball knows who stays and goes.

Conceivably, there could be several Duke basketball talents to at least declare for the 2021 NBA Draft.

DJ Steward. Mark Williams. Matthew Hurt. Wendell Moore Jr. Yes, any or all of those Blue Devils are possible entrants.

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On the other hand, the consensus among insiders and fans alike seems to be that only one of the above players will declare without later withdrawing his name. That player is sophomore power forward Matthew Hurt, who earned All-ACC First Team honors last season and typically appears in the second round on mock drafts as of late.

Deadlines for the Duke basketball underclassmen’s decisions

The NBA announced on Monday that the 2021 NBA Draft will be at 8 p.m. ET on July 29, with the draft lottery taking place more than a month prior at 8:30 p.m. on June 22.

Plus, Matthew Hurt and the nation’s other underclassmen now know by what date they must declare, and they should have a general idea of the withdrawal deadline.

According to a tweet on Monday afternoon from draft analyst Jonathan Givony of ESPN, the NBA has set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on May 30 to declare for the draft. And the tweet explained that the league will give early entrants until 5 p.m. on July 19 to withdraw their names.

Givony later noted that the NBA Combine is on the schedule for July 7. He added that the NCAA still hasn’t set an NBA Draft withdrawal date of its own, but that date is likely to fall somewhere around the middle of July.

Last year, as a result of the pandemic delaying everything on the NBA’s schedule, the NCAA had an Aug. 3 withdrawal deadline.

Currently, the only Blue Devil — insert asterisk — regularly showing up in the first round on mock drafts is Jalen Johnson, who left the program midseason back in February with his sights on becoming a 2021 lottery pick.