2026 NBA

Draft

Narcisse Ngoy goes to LA Clippers on draft night, but will play for Auburn next season

Narcisse Ngoy committed to Auburn in March after playing in a French league last season. Caleb Bowlin / Getty Images

It’s the dream of every young basketball player to be selected in the NBA Draft. And it came true on Thursday night for French big man Narcisse Ngoy.

There’s only one problem: Ngoy wasn’t expecting to be drafted and he plans to spend next season playing for Auburn.

Ngoy, a 22-year-old center, was taken by the Atlanta Hawks with the 57th pick and quickly dealt to the Los Angeles Clippers along with cash considerations for the draft rights to Henri Veesaar, the 52nd pick. Almost immediately, Ngoy said thanks but no thanks to the Clippers, at least for now.

“I am thankful for the LA Clippers’ confidence in me,” he said in a statement. “I fully intend to honor my commitment to Auburn University, and I am looking forward to wearing the Auburn Tigers jersey for the 2026–27 season.”

Clippers draft pick Narcisse Ngoy thanks Clippers — and says he plans to play for Auburn Tigers next season pic.twitter.com/5InJuBAQaP

— Law Murray 💊 (@LawMurrayTheNU) June 25, 2026

Herman Manakyan of Fusion Sports, who represents Ngoy, said in a statement to The Athletic that the selection came as a surprise.

“Being drafted by the Clippers was unanticipated,” Manakyan said. “He is still committed to go to Auburn. It’s an unprecedented and fluid situation. We are working through the implications at this time.”

Ngoy was the Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year in France’s Elite 2 League for Poitiers Basket 86. In March, Ngoy committed to play next season for coach Steven Pearl and Auburn.

“We’re excited to welcome Narcisse Ngoy to our program,” Pearl said of Ngoy at the time. “He’s a high-upside young man who brings toughness, physicality, and a team-first mindset to everything he does.”

Though he was automatically eligible to be drafted because of his age, Ngoy did not declare for the draft or sign a contract. Therefore, he’s allowed to return to the Tigers, who went 22-16 last season, a year after making the Final Four.

The Clippers have opted to stash Ngoy’s rights, which they hold indefinitely until he does join the NBA, making him the rare case of a domestic draft-and-stash player. One notable example was Larry Bird, who the Boston Celtics selected in 1978. He then returned for his final season at Indiana State, where he led the Sycamores to the 1979 NCAA championship game, before joining the Celtics the next season for the start of a Hall of Fame NBA career.

Though there was no communication between the Clippers and Ngoy’s reps before the draft, the two sides are allowed to be in touch and have communicated since he was drafted, according to people briefed on the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Analysis

Ever since James Nnaji returned to college basketball in December, a situation like Ngoy’s has been a possibility.

Even if, mechanically speaking, it was a relative improbability.

Nnaji, for context, was a second-round pick in 2023, but he never signed an NBA contract — including a two-way or Exhibit 10 deal — nor did he ever appear in an NBA game. That delineation, coupled with the fact that Nnaji had never played college basketball prior to being drafted, was ultimately why the NCAA deemed him eligible for Baylor in December. And while Nnaji made a minimal impact for the Bears over the final 18 games he participated in, averaging just 1.4 points in 8.2 minutes, his true legacy became upending the convention behind which players are and aren’t eligible to play collegiately.

People around basketball began discussing the idea of potential “draft-and-stash” players in college shortly after Nnaji was deemed eligible. The thought was simple: What NBA team wouldn’t want its developmental second-rounder cutting his teeth against future lottery picks in the SEC, rather than less-talented players in international leagues?

There was enough smoke around the subject that the NCAA attempted to close the loophole. With speculation that highly-touted international players like Jack Kayil — a former Gonzaga commit who was selected 39th in this week’s NBA Draft — might be potential domestic “draft-and-stash” possibilities, the governing body passed new rules in April aimed at preventing that outcome. As of April, international players had to “withdraw” from future professional drafts — the same way American college players do — in order to be eligible to play collegiately. That meant someone like Kayil had to formally opt to stay in the draft, rather than attend Gonzaga.

But Ngoy’s case is different because of his age. All international prospects are automatically eligible to be drafted once they turn 22, which Ngoy is; that’s different from a 20-year-old like Kayil who, as of April, had to declare whether he’d stay in — knowing he’d lose his eligibility, like American prospects, if he remained in the draft pool.

Instead, Ngoy is the rare instance of someone who didn’t have to make that declaration. If he was eligible for college basketball before, nothing about his second-round draft status changes that fact — so long as he doesn’t sign a contract.

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As for the Clippers, they retain Ngoy’s draft rights indefinitely, same as the New York Knicks still hold Nnaji’s (after he was traded there as part of the Karl-Anthony Towns deal).

Still, questions abound about how this will work. Can the Clippers call Pearl at Auburn and check in on Ngoy’s development? Can Auburn send the Clippers medical information if Ngoy gets injured? Can they mutually decide whether Ngoy — whose class designation has yet to be released by Auburn — should go pro next spring, or stay at Auburn for another year? There’s no rulebook for how any of this will or should be handled.

Similarly, both the NBA and NCAA will be careful to avoid copycats in the future. To steal a phrase from our John Hollinger: What if a player’s agent and an NBA team have a wink-wink agreement, and he commits to college before the draft while knowing he’s likely to be selected? Policing that would be difficult, and even more difficult to prove, but it would be shocking if teams don’t at least try to imitate this situation in the future.

That said, it’s worth reiterating that situations like Ngoy’s are already incredibly unlikely, and should be even more so in the future given the NCAA’s recently adopted age-based eligibility rules. — Brendan Marks

Jun 26, 2026

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