How NCAA's NIL boom has affected ... the Miami Heat

NIL has severely affected college athletics around the country, but it’s also impacted the Miami Heat. (Mandatory Credit: Keith Srakocic / AP Photo)

We are in the thick of the era of name, image and likeness (NIL) in college athletics. Over the last half-decade, it’s infiltrated college sports, where players are being paid for their fame, which has directly impacted the present and future of myriad student athletes nationwide.

A premier example is the NBA Draft player pool. In the NFL, players must play three seasons regardless of where they play, and they must forfeit the remainder of their eligibility after declaring.

It’s not as simple in the NBA.

Domestically, you can be eligible if you 1.) are one year removed from high school and 2.) 19-years-old in the same calendar year as the draft. Even if underclassmen attend the draft combine, they can also return to college roughly one month before the draft; typically, there’s a set date (this year, it’s May 27). There’s also a different set of rules for players who come internationally — and, within the last year, some pros overseas have found loopholes to play in college after going through the draft process (i.e., James Nnaji).

Furthermore, in the last few draft classes, NIL has sliced away the depth of draft classes in more ways than one.

NIL has significantly decreased the number of early entrants:

Players who are fringe top-20/25 picks now have the option to either return to school for seven figures or risk dropping in the draft. In 2025-26, the No. 25 pick had a first-year salary of nearly $3 million. Most power programs can afford that for a top-2/3 player on their roster, which these players, in most cases, would be.

The 2025 NBA Draft was a premier example. The talent was expected to be far deeper than it was the previous year, although 50 early entrants — such as Labaron Philon, who returned to Alabama, and Yaxel Lendeborg, who transferred to Michigan — withdrew their names; 109 total initially declared, and less than 50 remained (excluding upperclassmen). Betting on yourself doesn’t always work, but for those two players, it did.

The number of total early entrants decreased for the fifth-straight year in 2026, this time to 71:

2021: 353 total early entrants
2022: 283
2023: 242
2024: 201
2025: 109
2026: 71

So how does that affect the Miami Heat?:

While NIL — and, in turn, the transfer portal — has directly undercut the middle of drafts, it’s also directly affected the undrafted player pool that Miami subsisted on throughout Jimmy Butler’s prime.

It was fortunate to add Keshad Johnson after the 2024 draft, but the organization has struggled to add any consistent contributor from the undrafted pool, sans Dru Smith, over that span. Even last year, Vlad Goldin, one of the top undrafted free agents who immediately signed a two-way deal with the Heat after the draft, was a nonfactor.

With fewer early entrants, there are fewer the amount of (good) undrafted free agents, and thus it is harder for Miami to find a potential diamond in the rough. This is important not only because of the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes — which could deplete the Heat of all three of their tradable first-round picks (No. 13 overall; two from 2030-33) — but because they own just two second-round picks (No. 41, 2033) over the next seven years.

They can still pluck players from different organizations — like they did with Max Strus (Chicago) and Gabe Vincent (Sacramento). But the path for bolstering the peripheries becomes more arduous without any picks, thus decreasing the margin-for-error with the few choices they do have, and in free agency (which is dead).

The Miami Heat have been the league’s best in undrafted waters. They have also run circles on asset mismanagement. But NIL’s direct impact makes the concept of adding assets — especially draft capital, cost-controlled fuel used to buoy cores around the NBA — by selling high and summoning subpar contracts even more important.

They will follow their manifesto until the fat lady sings. Though now, in part because of NIL’s effect on the draft, is the time for the philosophy to adapt since the organization is a non-contender.