(ThyBlackMan.com) One of the biggest names in men’s college basketball this season was relatively unknown a couple of months ago. Baylor center James Nnaji has garnered attention for being a college basketball player for this 2025-2026 college basketball season despite this being a strong year for freshmen like Duke’s Cameron Boozer and Tennessee’s Nate Ament. At the beginning of the new year during a game against TCU, Baylor’s James Nnaji was booed by the road TCU crowd when he entered the game and every time he touched the basketball the booing continued. A strong vocal reaction from a road college basketball crowd usually is reserved for a great player playing for a rival school or an opposing player who had verbalized some disdain for the team he was playing against prior to the game but neither applies to Nnaji. Instead, Nnaji even playing college basketball has drawn the anger of plenty of college basketball fans, analysts, and tons of college basketball coaches due to his eligibility.
James Nnaji is a 7-foot-tall, 21-year-old Nigerian whose basketball background has caused controversy in college basketball. He was chosen in the 2023 NBA Draft second round by the Detroit Pistons as an international player playing in Turkey but returned to Europe without a contract and without ever appearing in the NBA. Nnaji spent four years playing professionally in Europe before Detroit drafted him as an 18-year-old with the first pick of the second round in 2023. Since Nnaji never signed an NBA contract and never set foot on an NBA court as an official NBA player he was eligible to play college basketball and joined Baylor in December 2025 after enrolling.
Nnaji’s eligibility situation has more than opposing fans angry as longtime college basketball coaches such as John Calipari and Tom Izzo have publicly decried the process and rules that allowed Nnaji to be eligible to join college basketball in 2026. During a long post game rant last month, Calipari exclaimed, “Does anybody care what this is doing for 17- and 18-year-old American kids? Do you know what this opportunity has done for them and their families? There aren’t going to be any high school kids,” Calipari said after he coached Arkansas’ 103-74 win over James Madison. “Who other than dumb people like me are going to recruit high school kids? I get so much satisfaction out of coaching young kids and seeing them grow and make it — and their family and life changes — that I’m going to keep doing it. But why would anybody else, if you can get NBA players, G League players, guys that are 28 years old, guys from Europe? Do we really know their transcript? Do we have somebody over there? Do we really know their birth certificate or don’t we?”
Before Calipari’s rant regarding the eligibility situation around Nnaji, Tom Izzo publicly said, “If that’s what we’re going to, shame on the NCAA. Shame on the coaches, too. But shame on the NCAA because coaches are going to do what they’ve got to do, I guess. But the NCAA’s the one. Those people on those committees that are making those decisions to allow something so ridiculous and not think of the kid. Everybody talks about me thinking of my program or selfish. No. Get that straight, for all of you. I’m thinking of what is best for my son if he was in that position, and I just don’t agree with it.”
It has not been unusual in sports history for college football players to be former drafted Major League Baseball players who return to play college football at an advanced age like Heisman Trophy winner Chris Weinke in the year 2000. There are several European basketball players who have entered college basketball in recent seasons who played professionally overseas who have not gotten the attention of Nnaji, who was drafted by the NBA, but there is a case to be made that in some Euroleagues the competition is better than the G-League that Nnaji competed in before joining Baylor. His eligibility is getting undue negative attention.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
