Mark Titus is a guard for Ohio State with 30 minutes of playing time under his belt. (That’s 30 minutes total, not per game.) He lead the nation last year in 3 point percentage and points per shot (one shot taken, a successful three pointer). But he’s also got one of the best athlete blogs out there. So when he tongue-in-cheek announced his intention to enter the NBA draft, it promised to be a funny and instructive look at the draft process through a prospect’s eyes.

But this is the NBA we’re talking about, so you knew they’d find a way to ruin everybody’s good time. They called Titus and told him to remove his name from the draft “or else.” Because god forbid they allow a kid to have a little fun.

Titus says he considered entering the draft before:

By the time the NCAA Tournament rolled around, there seemed to be quite the buzz amongst scouts about my abilities to both throw a perfect chest pass and belch the ABC’s in one breath. Despite the riches that were quite literally dangled in front of my face, I opted to return to school so I could continue to hit on that one tOSU cheerleader that I thought was winking at me the entire season. As it turns out, she apparently just had involuntary spasms in her cheek.

So last month, he officially submitted a letter to David Stern, making the case for himself:

I want to go on record as saying that I vow to never carry a firearm into a night club, and if I do, you can rest assured that the safety lock will most certainly be on. I am also volunteering myself to do every “NBA Cares” commercial, because let’s face it, the guys who do those commercials could really care less if inner city kids can read “Go, Dog. Go!”

…

P.S.- If I get drafted by a team that has #34 retired or someone already wearing it, you should let my be the first player to have a three digit jersey number.

Of course Titus would have gone undrafted and return to Ohio State, and everyone would have had a big laugh about it, and maybe learned something about one another. But naturally the NBA couldn’t leave this alone. Last week they got in touch with Titus and told him to pull out of the draft because, “apparently, Paul Shirley already dominated the bench-warmer blogging scene in the NBA.”

It’s unknown if the NBA makes similar calls to all the prospects that they think have no chance at getting drafted, but judging by the hundreds of high school and college kids who have declared early and gone undrafted through the years, I’m guessing they don’t.