The most recent occasion college and NBA basketball fans saw Emmanuel Mudiay play was in April 2014, when he was competing for the World Team at the Nike Hoop Summit in Portland, Oregon. The anticipation then was that he would lead coach Larry Brown's SMU Mustangs back to the NCAA tournament this season as a freshman before heading to the NBA.
But last summer, the 6-foot-5 point guard decided to forgo college basketball, and he signed a professional contract with the Guangdong Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association. The idea was to use his season in China to prepare for June's NBA draft. While a mild risk, it showed a lot of maturity for an 18-year-old.
Chinese professional basketball is quite an adjustment, even for a 10-year NBA veteran. The uniquely different culture, the distance from home, and the wacky nature of the CBA and its players, coaches, owners and rules are not easy to master.
The one-year plan, however, went awry when Mudiay injured his ankle in December, and he did not play in a game again until Sunday. With Guangdong trailing two games to none in its CBA semifinal playoff series with Beijing, Mudiay re-emerged and helped the Tigers to a 110-99 win, scoring 24 points and grabbing eight rebounds. His season ended with a 5-for-14 shooting performance and six turnovers in a loss on Tuesday.
Regardless of how little Mudiay played this season, he is still likely to be a high lottery pick. And even though he is now healthy enough to work out for NBA teams in the spring, he will remain an international man of mystery until he steps on an NBA court in a summer league in Las Vegas or Orlando.
I saw Mudiay play quite often when he was in high school in Texas, and I think I knew his game well before he left for China. How much he has improved or regressed remains to be seen upon his return to the United States.
We will break down his brief career in China in a future "Film Session." In the meantime, here is an initial breakdown of his game based on competition against many of the outstanding young stars who played at the Hoop Summit. Up to seven could make themselves available for June's draft.
Mudiay's greatest attribute is his size and body type for his NBA position. He is built to be able to attack the basket and is not afraid to throw his body at defenders on drives. If you couple that with above average open-court speed, you have a good idea why NBA teams are excited about him.
While the Hoop Summit was essentially a high school all-star game, both teams featured a number of players who will be in the NBA in the very near future. Watch this coast-to-coast drive by Mudiay past Arizona's Stanley Johnson and Duke's Jahlil Okafor and you get an idea of Mudiay's explosiveness:
Here, Mudiay hangs in the air and attacks 6-8, 240-pound Kansas Jayhawk Cliff Alexander with his body. As you can see, there is little doubt that once he catches the ball at midcourt, he is going hard to the basket to initiate contact.
While Mudiay can score, he also can use his size and speed to run the fast break and get his teammates involved in the offense. After this steal on Texas forward Myles Turner's drive, Mudiay nearly stumbles at midcourt, regains his balance, keeps his head up, and finds his teammate, Turkish forward Metecan Birsen, under the basket (Birsen eventually hits the short jumper):
If there are two areas where Mudiay can improve, in my opinion, they are his inconsistent jump shot and his tendency to be careless with his passing.
His jumper is a concern at the moment only because it is rare that a player can become an elite NBA point guard without keeping defenses honest with an accurate jump shot. More often than not, an average-to-below average shooter at the position will compromise his team's floor spacing.
Opponents will go under ball screens in the pick-and-roll while guarding him because they will not fear his 3-point shooting. Defenders will feel no need to help off great spot-up shooters to play his drives and can treat him as a nonshooter to help on good low-post players.
Mudiay's shooting technique when he left for China was what I would describe as "loose." Because his technique had flaws, the chances to repeat an accurate shot each time were low. Hopefully it's something that he has worked on.
On this pull-up jump shot in a screen-and-roll play, watch how he does not hold his follow-through with his shooting hand but rather pulls it back like a gun recoiling. He also lands with his shooting foot a good deal in front of his other foot, causing poor body balance on his landing:
These are correctable shooting mistakes with proper technique and perfect repetitions -- something he will receive the day he reports to his NBA team.
Not surprisingly, because of his size, Mudiay loves to post up smaller guards. This will be an added bonus for a creative NBA coach.
When I have watched Mudiay, he has had a tendency to not value the basketball and be sloppy with his decision-making. It's not surprising for young players to fall into these habits, but it is something that will be corrected with good coaching and maturity.
Here is a poor pass where he has tunnel vision and doesn't seem to see the traffic in the lane, and it leads to an easy steal and turnover:
One of the reasons Mudiay chose SMU was to play for Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown. He knew Brown's reputation for molding point guards even at the expense of irritating them at times. Mudiay seemed to embrace that opportunity "to play the right way," but it never came to fruition for him.
Despite his short time playing in China, the team that drafts Mudiay will get the opportunity to develop a 19-year-old point guard talent (his birthday is on Friday) the way Brown couldn't. Like most of the young players in this year's NBA draft, he has a lot to learn, but his starting point is greater than most.