Luis cleared to play for LSU after signing NBA deals

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  Myron MedcalfAug 24, 2026, 09:45 PM ET

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  • Covers college basketball
  • Joined ESPN.com in 2011
  • Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato

A Louisiana judge on Monday granted RJ Luis Jr., the 2025 Big East Player of the Year, a temporary injunction to play for LSU this season despite signing multiple NBA contracts.

After starring for St. John's in 2024-25 and securing second-team All-American honors, Luis went undrafted in the 2025 NBA draft. He then signed a two-way contract with the Jazz, and later an Exhibit 10 contract with the Celtics' G League affiliate after he was traded from Utah to Boston. He saw preseason action but never appeared in a regular-season game.

The NCAA has been battling players in the 2022 class who've sought a fifth year of eligibility after they were excluded from the new age-based eligibility rules that will give every athlete five seasons to compete in the years ahead.

Luis is not a fifth-year player. His case, however, could create a new pipeline of players who've signed professional contracts and want to make their way back to college basketball and the millions of dollars available to them if they do.

On Friday, the NCAA won its motion to reverse a federal preliminary injunction in Colorado that had created a blanket waiver for players in the 2022 high school class to play a fifth season. But it has lost the majority of cases at the state level in those eligibility cases.

Luis' situation could start a new wave of eligibility challenges.

"I hear that every time we do one of these eligibility cases: 'This is gonna be the end of the NCAA.' That is not true," Elliot Sol Abrams, one of Luis' attorneys, told reporters after the judge's ruling Monday. "The NCAA chose to allow schools to start paying players directly. It made that choice. It could've fought that but it chose not to and so when you create the NCAA now as a professional league and then you start drawing these arbitrary distinctions and saying 'this is too much or that's too much,' all of these things, every time someone challenges an arbitrary decision of the NCAA, the NCAA cries wolf.

"This is just a judge forcing the NCAA to live up to the law as so many judges have had to do because the NCAA has decided to try to draw distinctions that don't stand up to reason."

Added Tony Clayton, a district attorney in Baton Rouge who also represented Luis: "RJ, he doesn't want the cheese. He just wants out of that NCAA trap. Think about that. It's simple."

The NCAA successfully fought and won its case against Charles Bediako, who appeared briefly for Alabama during the 2025-26 season three years after he'd left school to enter the NBA, where he signed multiple professional contracts. The judge in that case ruled Bediako had signed a professional contract and therefore could not be eligible per NCAA rules.

The players in the current pool of fifth-year prospects represent a one-time situation, as future college players will all get a fifth season. Luis' case could create a new influx of players who've signed professional contracts, even if they were in school years ago, to compete again at the collegiate level.

The NCAA will likely fight this case. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, in a court filing, has spoken out against Luis and Kentucky commit Mark Mitchell, who'd signed an Exhibit 10 contract before a local judge on Saturday cleared him to play.

Beyond the legal ramifications, the move is also a significant addition for Will Wade and LSU, which had just four players on its official roster earlier this month. Luis, a 6-foot-7 wing, averaged 18.2 points and 7.2 rebounds during the 2024-25 season. His arrival immediately raises the ceiling for LSU, which also has commitments from former UCLA teammates Donovan Dent and Skyy Clark.

Wade will have to rely on the courts to support his roster this season, as the bulk of his players will need court rulings to play -- court rulings that could be challenged, potentially jeopardizing the standing of those players in the months ahead.