James Nnaji booed in collegiate debut at Baylor, 2 years after being selected in 2023 NBA Draft

For the first time in decades, an NBA Draft pick played in a college basketball game on Saturday.

The player was James Nnaji, who was selected 31st overall by the Detroit Pistons in the 2023 NBA Draft. After five years playing for FC Barcelona in Europe, he signed with a Baylor program looking for interior help. It is the start of four years of NCAA eligibility, made possible by the increasingly blurred line between the collegiate and professional levels.

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Baylor signing the 21-year-old has not been a popular move, to say the least, and that bore out as the Bears faced TCU on the road in Nnaji’s first game in college. Wearing a No. 50 jersey that didn’t even have his name on it yet, he was greeted with loud boos.

The boos continued every time Nnaji touched the ball, including when the 7-footer scored his first career points on a putback dunk midway through the first half.

Nnaji finished the game with 5 points on 2-of-3 shooting with 4 rebounds, 1 assist and 2 turnovers in 16 minutes off the bench. Baylor lost to TCU, 69-63, lowering their record to 10-3.

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Nnaji is a Nigerian national who began his organized basketball career in the Hungarian leagues before joining Barcelona in 2020. Since being drafted in the NBA, he has been loaned out twice to teams in Spain and Turkey, while his NBA rights have been traded to the Charlotte Hornets, then the New York Knicks. He has yet to play in the NBA.

By nearly any definition of the world, Nnaji is a professional basketball player, and yet the NCAA cleared him to play for Baylor. The decision outraged numerous big names in college basketball, both for the line that has been crossed and the confusion about the ever-changing rulebook that let him do it.

TCU head coach Jamie Dixon echoed the latter while speaking with reporters after the game:

“I wish we had rules and they were clarified before the year, but I said the other day, we’ve gone from the NCAA with all these rules, and now we have money involved, we’re a…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mens-college-basketball/article/james-nnaji-booed-in-collegiate-debut-at-baylor-2-years-after-being-selected-in-2023-nba-draft-231904919.html

Author : Jack Baer

Publish date : 2026-01-03 23:19:00

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