Four days before Oklahoma City opens the season, a Spanish basketball club is arguing that the Thunder’s lottery pick is not eligible to play.
Basket Zaragoza, which competes as Casademont Zaragoza, said Friday that its contract with Aday Mara is in force for 2026-27 and that it will oppose any transfer request. The club says it has notified the Spanish Basketball Federation, FIBA, the NBA and the Thunder that a formal Letter of Clearance is required for Mara to be eligible.
Oklahoma City disagrees, and said so within hours.
The Thunder’s position
A team spokesperson said that, as advised by the NBA, Mara’s three years of NCAA play mean no clearance from the Spanish club is required for him to play in the NBA.
That is the crux of the argument. The NCAA operates outside the FIBA transfer system, so college players do not need a Letter of Clearance to move between college and the pros. Zaragoza is trying to run that gap the other direction, arguing that because Mara’s move to college never went through FIBA, it never terminated his Spanish contract.
Zaragoza’s own statement makes the point for the club: “FIBA regulations do not require an international transfer to play in the NCAA, which does not recognize it.”
General manager Jose Artigas was more direct about what the club wants. “We want him to fulfill the contract,” he said. The club added that it has an obligation to protect its rights and will take all necessary legal action.
This fight is three years old
Mara, 21, is a 7-foot-3 center from Zaragoza who debuted for the club in 2021 at 16. He left unilaterally in 2023, at 18, to go to UCLA. He was cleared for that move only just before the 2023-24 season, after a similarly contentious process.
Zaragoza had already sued him for breach of contract, seeking more than $600,000 to release him from the deal. That litigation has not been resolved.
After two seasons at UCLA he transferred to Michigan for 2025-26, where he was Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and won the national championship. Oklahoma City took him 12th overall in the 2026 draft.
He has been the best story of the Thunder’s preseason
Across five preseason games Mara averaged 13.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.4 blocks in 23.3 minutes while shooting 26-for-33 from the field. That is a 79 percent clip on 33 attempts, which is the sort of number that gets a 12th pick into a rotation quickly.
Multiple reports say he is expected to be eligible, and the precedent supports that. Players leaving European clubs for the NCAA and then the NBA have generally not faced eligibility holds, which is why most of the coverage treats this as unlikely to delay his debut.
What is not known
FIBA has taken no public position. The NBA league office has not commented on the record, and the Thunder’s statement says only that the team was advised by the league, which leaves open whether that guidance was written. The status of the Zaragoza lawsuit is unclear and Mara’s rookie-scale contract terms have not been reported.
Oklahoma City opens Tuesday, Oct. 20 at San Antonio. The reasonable expectation is that Mara plays and that this becomes a contract dispute between a club and a player rather than an eligibility problem for an NBA team. Zaragoza has been losing this argument since 2023. It is not obvious what changed.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.