Celtics draft and stash player from Anthony Edwards’ draft class makes $5 million move to NCAA originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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Back in the 2020 NBA Draft, the Celtics selected a player named Yam Madar 47th overall, who at the time was 19-years old.
He was playing overseas for Hapoel Tel Aviv at the time, and continued to play for several teams in Europe in the last few years.
He was a draft and stash for the Celtics, since they couldn’t get him to come overseas, but recently, he finally chose to come to America, just not in the way you’d expect.
Celtics draft and stash player Yam Madar makes $5 million move to NCAA
It was reported that Madar was heading to America to play in the NCAA, as he agreed to a $5 million deal to play for LSU.
MORE: Meet LSU’s new $5 million basketball star who is a 25-year-old EuroLeague vet
In the 2021-22 NBA Summer League, Madar played three games with the Celtics, averaging 4.7 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.0 assists in 15.7 minutes.
The wait to go to college may have been worth it for Madar, as a $5 million salary is equivalent to about how much the 8th overall pick made in his rookie year in 2020-21.
This wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago, before NIL was introduced and popularized.
Madar will join recent players like James Nnaji, who were drafted into the NBA but chose to pursue playing college basketball afterwards.
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