June 11, 2015
Considering the unpredictable nature of these things, it seems kind of silly to create a demarcation point. Let’s do it anyway, though.
If you take a good look at the upcoming NBA Draft, it seems as if the biggest drop-off comes between the eighth and ninth picks. In the Sixers’ case, we’ve seen them linked with almost all of the players in the projected Top-8 with the possible exceptions of Kentucky big men Karl-Anthony Towns (should be off the board at 3) and Willie Cauley-Stein (already have his skill set on the roster).
Of the remaining six players, half of them played their basketball overseas this season. Of those three players, nobody saw less of the court than Congolese-American point guard Emmanuel Mudiay, who made a late decision to forgo a one-and-done season with Larry Brown at SMU to play for the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association.
It was kind of a weird season for Mudiay. He started out playing pretty well, got nicked up, and then was Wally Pipp’d by fellow “import” Will Bynum. Chinese teams apparently only allow two foreign players on their active roster, and Bynum was tearing it up so they stuck with the hot hand. Mudiay didn’t play again until the playoffs, when he had a respectable showing while his team bowed out to Stephon Marbury’s Beijing Ducks.
Even though he’s an American high school kid, you could easily argue Mudiay is the mystery man of this draft. From Chad Ford:
Just a handful of NBA scouts and an even fewer number of NBA execs had been able to make the trip to China to see him before he was injured. Most executives and scouts were planning on heading over in early December. But Mudiay played in just two more games -- in the playoffs in March -- and even then he was a last-minute addition. To my knowledge, no significant NBA decision-makers were able to get there in time to see him play.
According to a report from Bleacher Report, only one NBA general manager was able to see Mudiay play in person in China. Good news, Sixers fans: It was the guy running your team, which qualifies one of those little edges that Sam Hinkie always talks about hoping to find. In many ways, I find the strengths and weaknesses in Mudiay’s game to be the exact opposite of the other top-tier point guard in this draft, D’Angelo Russell. Let’s view his game through that lens.
• Unlike Russell, there’s no question Mudiay belongs on an NBA floor athletically. He’s big (6’5”), quick, strong, and all of the things you’d want to see in a modern lead guard from a physical standpoint. Here’s some highlight porn that doesn’t matter at all except in that it shows how high and powerfully Mudiay can get off the floor. He should be excellent in transition.
Emmanuel Mudiay with a crazy off-the-backboard dunk pic.twitter.com/xviPJLY3Dp
— Chad Ford (@chadfordinsider) June 5, 2015
• That athleticism is what creates what I feel is a superior floor game to Russell. A lot of people focused on Russell’s highlight reel bounce passes against Northwestern and Iowa, but those are highlights for a reason. They don’t happen much. Operating out of the pick-and-roll for his CBA team, Mudiay seemed very comfortable getting into the lane, drawing the defense, and finding the open man either on the roll or spotting up on the three-point line. That skill should translate to the NBA.
• Mudiay’s defense should be a plus. Maybe it’s just because I watched him so much in Philly, but he kind of looks like Jrue Holiday to me on that end of the floor. That’s a good thing.
• From everything you read about Mudiay, he’s a great guy who in Hinkie speak “is dedicated to working at his craft.” It seems like he’s met every obstacle thrown at him in life and persevered despite them. By all accounts, he handled a difficult situation in China very well.
• Remember all of the gushing about Russell’s jumper? Coming into the NBA, that’s the one clear advantage he has over Mudiay. It’s a big one, too. When you hear reports about a player fairly frequently missing left and right as opposed to long and short, there’s a pretty big mechanical problem with their jump shot. Mudiay was reportedly somewhere around a 60 percent free-throw shooter in high school tournaments, which also indicates there’s a problem.
• Just like we talked about with Russell, what happens if the opposing guard goes under the screen when Mudiay runs the pick-and-roll with Embiid? Can he make the defense pay in that situation? If you think the jumper can improve to the point that Mudiay can, he’s clearly ahead of Russell as a prospect. That’s a big “if,” though.
• I don’t really have all that much else, because Mudiay looks to be a fine prospect otherwise. Shooting is a huge deal, though. In an ideal world, you would want a Russell Westbrook, John Wall, or Derrick Rose pre-injury type of athlete to run your offense if he isn’t an elite shooter. Even though he’s a plus athlete, I’m not sure Mudiay is at that level where he’s literally jumping off the screen at you.
In all likelihood, Mudiay is going to be there at 3. I think I agree with fellow Sixers Beat podcaster Derek Bodner, who has expressed that Mudiay might be a safer pick than Russell with perhaps a lower ceiling. It’s an interesting viewpoint, because usually the athletic guys are viewed as boom-or-bust, high ceiling types.
Hinkie reportedly is interested in Mudiay, which he should be. As far as drafting him, though, I’d personally need to be pretty confident in his jumper eventually improving. It’s so much harder to build an elite NBA offense around a point guard who can’t shoot.
Follow Rich on Twitter: @rich_hofmann
