The proverbial lines that regulate college sports have never been more difficult to identify than they are at this present moment in time. Players that would have been declared ineligible without a second thought as recently as five years ago are now not just being allowed to suit up for collegiate athletic programs across the country, they’re being paid handsomely (in some cases extremely handsomely) to do so.
Even in this current climate, every now and then there comes a situation where the line crossing becomes akin to pornography: You might not be able to fully articulate exactly what lines have been breached, but you know it when you see it.
Enter, of course, Will Wade. The man who was openly talking about paying players before it was cool (or allowed) is back to pushing the envelope in Baton Rouge like Kendrick Lamar and Drake are lightly lobbing sneak disses at one another.
On Monday, Wade made headlines for signing 25-year-old Israeli point guard Yam Madar to a reported $5 million deal. Not only is Madar a EuroLeague vet at this point — his Hapoel Tel Aviv B.C. squad just faced Real Madrid Baloncesto in a EuroLeague quarterfinal — but he was the 47th overall pick by Boston in the 2020 NBA Draft. For reference, that’s the same draft where Anthony Edwards, LaMelo Ball and Tyrese Haliburton all had their names called.
Madar, who will turn 26-years-old in December, never signed with the Celtics, but the franchise still owns his draft rights. He was the EuroLeague’s “Rising Star” award recipient in 2023, and averaged 11.1 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game in 16 appearances for Hapoel Tel Aviv in league play last season.
If that piece of news wasn’t splashy enough, less than 24 hours later LSU announced that Wade had signed former St. John’s star R.J. Luis. The 2024-25 Big East Player of the Year, Luis opted last spring to spurn another year in college in favor of chasing his NBA dream. He went undrafted.
While there were rumors last summer that Wade was trying to convince Luis to sign with him at NC State, the 6’7 wing ultimately inked a two-way contract with the Utah Jazz. Two months later he was traded to the Boston Celtics. Though he was waived by Boston before the start of the 2025-26 season, Luis signed an Exhibit 10 contract with the Celtics’ G League affiliate, the Maine Celtics.
The Luis signing has immediately drawn comparisons to the Charles Bediako situation that Alabama went through this past season.
In 2023, Bediako had left school early to play in the NBA, gone undrafted, ultimately signed a two-way contract with San Antonio, and competed in the G League as a professional over parts of three seasons. He then re-signed with Alabama and played five games for the Crimson Tide between January 24 and February 7 thanks to a temporary restraining order. On February 9, his temporary restraining order expired and he was denied a motion to play out the remainder of the season.
“The NCAA has not and will not grant eligibility to any prospective or returning student-athletes who have signed an NBA contract (including a two-way contract),” NCAA President Charlie Baker said in a statement last December in response to the Bediako situation.
Wade’s reasons for pushing the envelope here extend beyond his established status as a provocateur.
Since making the highly controversial jump from NC State back to LSU after just one season in Raleigh, Wade has had a more difficult time piecing together a roster than he likely anticipated. The Tigers are returning essentially zero production from last season’s 15-17 squad and have no incoming freshmen from the recruiting class of 2026. This would be fine if Wade was crushing it in the NCAA transfer portal. He hasn’t been.
Wade has inked just four players from the portal so far this spring — Divine Ugochukwu from Michigan State, Abdi Bashir from Kansas State, Mo Dioubate from Kentucky, and Austin Nunez from UTSA. That’s a four man class that has LSU currently ranked No. 40 in 247 Sports’ team portal rankings. At a time when most major conference programs are putting the finishing touches on their 2026-27 rosters, Wade and the Tigers are very much in scramble mode.
Earlier this month, Wade beat out Kentucky to sign 23-year-old Brazilian big man Marcio Santos of the Israeli league. In addition to signing Madar and Luis, there are reports that Wade has also been pursuing 22-year-old Saliou Niang, who is currently competing in the Italian Wing. With so few uncommitted impactful players in the portal remaining, it’s apparent at this time that Wade’s last ditch effort to produce a roster that can be competitive in the ultra-difficult SEC revolves around signing as many pros as possible and hoping at least a handful of them will be deemed eligible by the NCAA.
Given the precedent set by the Bediako situation, it seems extremely unlikely that the NCAA will clear Luis for a return to college basketball in 2026-27. Madar has more of a shot (somehow), but it still seems more likely than not that the NCAA will do everything in its power to keep the seasoned EuroLeague vet from spending the first four months of his 26th year playing college basketball.
For any other power conference college basketball coach, the actions taken by Wade this week would reek of desperation and a lack of any sort of respect for the last vestiges of the sanctity of college hoops. But for a man who has spent the better part of his kicking at lines like a leadoff batter on a dirt field and still managed to fall upwards more times than not, it’s almost hard to blame him for continuing to exist in the shadowy world he knows better than anyone.
