He's NBA draft eligible but hasn't played college or prep hoops
Jordan Haber didn’t play basketball in college.
He didn’t play in high school or middle school either.
But he’s 21 years old and a recent graduate of the University of Florida.
And the lifelong Miami Heat fan has the patience to read through complicated legal documents and fill out a bunch of paperwork.
That’s apparently all it takes to become eligible for the NBA draft.
“I am now Jordan Haber, member of the 2023 NBA draft class, uh, soon to be undrafted class,” Haber said in a May 18 TikTok video that has been viewed more than 3.1 million times.
In his next TikTok video, posted the next day, Haber explained that he’s an upcoming law student who likes to read legal documents for fun. One day, Haber said, he got bored, started looking through the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement and thought he spotted a loophole that might allow him, and many other people, to actually enter the draft.
According to Article X, Section 1 (b)(i) and (ii), a person can be eligible for the draft if he is “at least nineteen (19) years of age during the calendar year in which the Draft is held, and ... at least one (1) NBA Season has elapsed since the player’s graduation from high school” and “has graduated from a four-year college or university in the United States (or is to graduate in the calendar year in which the Draft is held) and has no remaining intercollegiate basketball eligibility.”
Haber said he emailed the NBA with documentation that proved he met the criteria, then filled out the forms he received from the league ... and that’s really all it took.
“I think they’re like, who is this kid, why did he find the loophole into actually getting into the draft, ‘cause this is not supposed to happen,” Haber said in his first video.
The NBA did not immediately respond to questions from The Times for this story.
In the month since that first video posted, a TikTok account that had been dedicated largely to discussing “Star Wars” has instead become the place where Haber has documented his NBA draft journey for his nearly 96,000 followers with almost daily (and often even more than that) posts. He has also indicated that a full documentary is in the works.
In his videos, Haber says that journey has included getting comments on his posts from various NBA and NFL teams, being filmed shooting hoops for ABC’s “Good Morning America” and receiving an invite to the draft by the event’s host, the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
And now, the journey has taken Haber to New York ahead of Thursday’s draft, where he hopes to rub shoulders with actual NBA prospects Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson. The former youth league player obviously doesn’t expect to hear his named called by Commissioner Adam Silver, but Haber really didn’t expect any of this not too long ago.
“Let me put it like this, to put this all into context,” Haber said in a video posted May 28. “It has been easier to get into and go to the NBA draft than get Taylor Swift tickets. Like, seriously, I can’t get tickets anywhere.”
