James Nnaji has landed at George Mason.
The 21-year-old sophomore center committed to the Patriots Thursday morning, adding three years of college eligibility to an Atlantic 10 roster that now gets one of the more unusual big-man resumes in recent memory. Nnaji had entered the transfer portal on opening day in April and, after a long wait, finally found his next stop.
At 7-foot-1, Nnaji’s path to this point has been anything but typical. He first left Nigeria at 15 to play in Hungary, where he says he was first exposed to organized competitive basketball. In that one year, he started overpowering the competition and eventually earned an offer from FC Barcelona in Spain.
He spent the next three years in the Spanish league before entering the 2023 NBA draft. The Detroit Pistons selected him in the second round and then sent him to the Charlotte Hornets on draft night. He has still not played in an actual NBA game, though he did appear in summer league for both the Hornets and the New York Knicks, who later acquired his draft rights in the trade for NBA champion Karl-Anthony Towns.
Nnaji’s college chapter drew even more attention when he signed with Baylor on New Year’s Eve of 2025. That move came after center Juslin Bodo Bodo suffered a season-ending injury, and it was viewed as a necessary push by head coach Scott Drew to keep the Bears competitive. The backlash was immediate, with fans across the country questioning how a former NBA draftee could join NCAA ranks, especially as a 21-year-old freshman.
Nnaji spoke about that reaction in a January ESPN interview.
"I was getting a lot of insults and cuss words from people -- like really, really, really rude things coming towards me," Nnaji said in a January ESPN interview. "I was like, 'But what did I do, man?' I'm as young as everybody in here."
His time at Baylor never really caught on. He averaged 1.4 points and 2.1 rebounds in 18 games, and by season’s end he had slipped out of the regular rotation.
When the 2025-26 season wrapped, Baylor had to sort out its future in the frontcourt. Between redshirt freshman Mayo Soyoye and Nnaji as the backup option behind Bodo Bodo next season, Drew’s staff chose Soyoye.
Now George Mason becomes the latest stop on a career that has already taken Nnaji through the Detroit Pistons, the Charlotte Hornets, the New York Knicks, FC Barcelona, Girona, Merkezefendi, Baylor, and now the Patriots.
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