Vanderbilt has exhaled. Tyler Tanner is back on campus.
But that big NBA decision, it was close. Closer than you might think. Certainly closer than many believed when the Commodores‘ point guard initially declared for the 2026 NBA Draft.
“Most of the NBA guys at the start of the process just thought I was coming back,” said Tanner, seated in Vanderbilt basketball‘s Huber Center. “That’s why we had to push that narrative really hard of, ‘I’m two feet in the draft.’ As time went on, I think teams, as I met with them and talked to them, they started to realize it was real.
“I really wanted to be in the draft this past year. … That’s what made it so hard about the decision. Because I was right there.”
On the morning of May 27, the deadline for Tanner to withdraw his name and return to college, he still wasn’t ready to give up on it. The door was cracked. He was still talking to NBA teams, conducting 11th-hour workouts with the Charlotte Hornets and Memphis Grizzlies.
Driving back from Memphis on deadline day, accompanied by his parents and girlfriend, Tanner finally reached a decision. He was a Commodore again. For one more season.
First thing after that? A FaceTime call to Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington, who was attending a high school graduation party for his son. When Tanner asked if Byington could go somewhere quiet to talk, it laughably worried the coach – needlessly, of course – about the news he was about to receive.
“He was excited, for sure,” Tanner said. “And not selfishly. He was just excited that we get one more year together, because he knows I love playing for him, and I think he enjoys coaching me as well.”
There’s no overstating the importance of that FaceTime call for Vanderbilt’s 2026-27 season. With its star player and leading scorer back, everything is on the table again for Byington’s Commodores.
With a roster largely reassembled through the transfer portal, they’ll likely open the season in the top 25, with eyes again on a deeper NCAA Tournament run.
“If I’m in college, this is where I want to be,” said Tanner, a local star who attended Brentwood Academy. “Definitely unfinished business, for sure. I felt like that team last year, if we would have won that (Nebraska) game, I think we would have been Elite Eight, honestly.
“Obviously, it’s not the same team, but with the coaching staff coming back and the team that we bring in this year, I think we’ve got all the tools for it again.”
To expand on that thought: Tanner said his decision was always Vanderbilt or the NBA.
No matter what you might’ve heard, the transfer portal was never an option he considered this offseason, he insisted. He said he signed with CAA and agent Dave Spahn in March because he needed help in his NBA pursuit, not to barter with universities: “Wasn’t anything with college, really, at all.”
“I told (Byington) in my exit meeting, ‘I can’t leave here,’” Tanner said. “This is home for me and my family. It’s been so great to me. I would never change up. I’m going to stay loyal.”
So that rumor about Tanner considering a transfer to … Tennessee?
Go ahead and file that one under the exhaustive category of don’t-believe-everything-you-read-on-social-media.
“I don’t check social media a lot, like people who are messaging me,” Tanner said. “But so many Tennessee fans were either thinking I was going there for whatever reason or just trying to tell me to go there. … People even after the portal had closed were like, ‘Nah, he’s coming to Tennessee.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not coming to Tennessee. I don’t know where y’all got this information.’
“It was wild.”
Tanner was serious about leaving for pro ball, though, and pro ball was serious about him, too.
The consensus, Tanner said, among his agents and teams was that he’d be selected in the first round.
“Everybody said that they thought I would be picked in the first round,” Tanner said, “but there was no way to be 100% sure.”
The “but” in that statement proved pivotal in Tanner’s decision, as the difference between first and second round in the NBA draft is significant in guaranteed money and the chance for a successful career in the league. Had Tanner known that he would’ve definitely been a first-rounder “that would probably be a little different,” he said, in terms of his choice.
As is, he’s back for one more year, carrying feedback from the NBA.
He’s aiming to put on weight to get stronger. He said pro teams also want to see more from him defensively, with a concern being how Tanner, at 5-foot-11, will handle having to switch onto guarding taller wing players.
Hesitation at the next level over Tanner’s size is nothing new for him. He heard those same doubts in high school as an unheralded recruit. Vanderbilt was Tanner’s lone SEC option when he committed.
How’d that work out for the rest of the SEC last season?
“I mean, there’s always people who just aren’t going to believe in me,” Tanner said. “I know that’s going to be what’s it’s like, especially in the NBA, where they have some 6-8 point guards. It’s like, ‘He’s 5-11,’ but it doesn’t shake my confidence at all. It’s actually really a positive for me, just keeping a chip on my shoulder. I’m never going to be complacent with wherever I am. I’m always trying to prove something more.”
It’s tantalizing, around Vanderbilt, to think what that could entail for Tanner, who went from being a relative role player as a freshman to one of the best guards in college basketball as a sophomore.
Gracious, what’s next?
These Commodores are fortunate. They’re about to find out.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at [email protected] and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
Subscribe to Updates
Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.
