Interesting post by Mike McCann on the question of whether a basketball player could enforce an oral promises by an NBA team to draft him if he enters the NBA draft early. My initial intuition is that this is best enforced by extralegal forces, such as the team's and management's reputation, and that any promise would be subject to an implicit condition that the team could change its mind depending on what happened during the draft. Nonetheless, there is clear detrimental reliance here that is induced by the team, and as a result, at least some intent to be bound.

Interesting question, and it isn't obvious to me how it would be resolved. Mike suggests that so far the extralegal sanctions appear to have been strong enough to cause these promises to be enforced.