The 2015 NBA Draft Thread: Draft Day Is Here

i've never seen so many people upset at the potential of draft a big man that eventually can be capable of scoring 20 points per game. just dont get it.
 
Making the case for being the No. 1 pick: Emmanuel Mudiay

In a world of draft stock and hype, Emmanuel Mudiay is invisible.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

That's what happens when you spend the year playing 12 games in China. Most of them far away from the view of NBA scouts. Even further away from NBA decision makers like GMs, coaches and owners. Mudiay hasn't played a game of 5-on-5 since early March. He skipped the NBA draft combine, leaving NBA folks even more frustrated. No physicals. No interviews. Nothing.

After I tweeted I was at the 360 Gym in Reseda on Friday to watch Mudiay work out, my phone began buzzing with texts and phone calls from all over the NBA. I was one of the first people outside Mudiay's inner circle to see him play basketball in months.

By the time the workout was over, everyone had the same question. How did he look?

The answer? Better than he looked in practices and games at the Nike Hoop Summit, last April when a number of GMs had him pegged as a top two prospect in the NBA draft.

So good, in fact, that I have no doubt, had he stayed at SMU and played for Larry Brown instead of heading to China, he'd be No. 2 (where he debuted on Big Board 1.0) right now, just weeks from the draft.

As he begins NBA team workouts (he worked out for the Lakers on Saturday and will be in New York working out for the Knicks on Tuesday) the question is, can he still make a strong case for the No. 1 pick?

Just 14 months ago, Mudiay was a serious contender for the No. 1 pick based on his raw athleticism, size and speed. He had just finished a week of practices and a game at the Nike Hoop Summit where he was on the court with Jahlil Okafor, Towns, Justise Winslow, Stanley Johnson, Kelly Oubre, Myles Turner, Tyus Jones and Clint Capela. Hundreds of NBA scouts and executives were in attendance.

After scoring 20 points, grabbing five rebounds and handing out five assists at the Hoop Summit, a number of GMs felt Mudiay had the potential to be the best player in the draft.

Here's what I wrote on June 27th about Mudiay's draft stock:

"[Jahlil] Okafor's top competition for the No. 1 pick will come from Mudiay, a 6-foot-5 point guard committed to SMU -- the No. 2-ranked player on our Top 100. Mudiay has both size and elite athleticism for his position. He's quick, strong, is relentless at getting to the basket and finishes above the rim.

His dominant play at the Nike Hoop Summit had many scouts predicting that he would eventually overtake Okafor as the No. 1 pick in the draft. Mudiay isn't a great shooter yet, can be turnover-prone and he's going to play for a head coach, Larry Brown, who is notoriously hard on young point guards (some scouts see that as a good thing). But if he really gets things going as a freshman, his upside could easily vault him over Okafor. If I were to rank the percentage of these two going No. 1 right now, it would be Okafor at 51 percent and Mudiay at 49 percent. It's that close."

Teams were salivating over the idea that Larry Brown could smooth out Mudiay's rough edges and make him a star.

In July, Mudiay shocked everyone by announcing that he would forgo his freshman season at SMU, play professionally in China and sign a lucrative deal with Under Armour.

No one in the NBA was thrilled with the arrangement. Scouting Mudiay in China would be much harder. Young American players such as Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler had struggled when they tried to skip college to go play pro as 18-year-olds. Nevertheless, virtually every team I spoke with felt, at the end of the day, Mudiay's exodus to China wouldn't have a negative effect on his draft stock.

Dante Exum, who didn't play a minute of college ball and spent most of the season working out at a gym in Los Angeles by himself, had just gone No. 5 in the 2014 draft. Exum was thought to go possibly as high as No. 2 to Milwaukee. And Exum, for all of his talent, didn't have the upside that Mudiay had.

In the end, of the NBA scouts I spoke with last July, none of them thought Mudiay's draft stock would be damaged. Most predicted he would still go No. 1 or No. 2 - even if his season in China didn't go well.

But there were two things they weren't anticipating:

One, Mudiay ended up spraining his ankle nine games into the season. Just a handful of NBA scouts and even a fewer number of NBA execs, had made the trip to China to see him before the injury. 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.

Second, teams didn't factor in "recency bias." Recency bias occurs when we are swayed by the most recent information we've received. In essence, people tend to de-value information received in the past and over-value the most current information. It comes up all the time in NBA scouting. Opinions from decision makers are often swayed by how a player performed in March Madness, for example. And the NCAA tournament usually is the last time a team has seen a prospect play.

So while everyone loved Mudiay in April (the last time they saw him play), someone like D'Angelo Russell's more recent play ranked ahead of Mudiay's play a year ago. Last season, most NBA folks didn't have Russell ranked as a first rounder. A year later, without seeing Mudiay play a game and after the terrific season Russell had, they now believe Russell's better.

And he might be. The problem for most scouts is that they just don't know because they haven't seen Mudiay in a year and that memory has lost urgency and weight. It's also difficult to quantify what Mudiay did in China for those 12 games he played when you factor in his age, the system in China and the relatively small sample size.

Our own Kevin Pelton created a statistical Chinese CBA-to-NBA translation of his stats in March. Pelton's conclusion? Mudiay's performance in China confirmed him as a top-5 pick.

Wrote Pelton: "The big thing that stands out as a strength is Mudiay's rebounding. His projected defensive rebound rate would be average for an NBA shooting guard and is very good for a point guard. As I've noted in the past, rebounding guards tend to translate better to the NBA than their poor-rebounding counterparts. Mudiay's 2-point percentage is also solid. The biggest knock on his game right now is a lack of free throw attempts. At the same time, given he shot just 57.4 percent from the line in China, that might not be the worst thing. The comps you mention match up well with what SCHOENE finds in terms of similarity. [Derrick] Rose is the closest match for Mudiay at the same age, with [John] Wall also in the top three (along with Jrue Holiday). And [Russell] Westbrook and [Tyreke] Evans are among Mudiay's top-10 comps."

What isn't clear is how well Russell would've fared in China. He's a better shooter and largely considered a better passer, but would he have held up as well in a league with much more physicality?

Russell was both initially underrated and improved dramatically as a freshman, but there's no evidence that Mudiay was underrated and no evidence that he didn't improve during his stint in China. In fact, when talking to Larry Brown and a NBA scout who did scout him in China for the Mudiay feature I mentioned earlier, it's pretty clear that Mudiay might have been slightly underrated in July and that his experience in China was a plus.

The comps that SCHOENE (Pelton's projection system) made for Mudiay (Rose, Wall and Jrue Holiday) all suggest that he's going to be a stud. After watching him for myself in a workout on Friday, I believe both to be true.

While I believe Towns is the best prospect in this draft, next to Towns, he's the most intriguing physical prospect in the draft. He does incredible things for a player his size. And as far as the experience in China? Mudiay has developed both physically and mentally in ways that will be hard for the other top players in the draft to match.

The physical gifts

The first thing that stands out about Mudiay when he took the floor on Friday was his sheer size. He measured at 6-foot-5 1/2 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan at his workout with the Lakers on Saturday. He's added nine pounds of muscle since I saw him last in April.

Physically, he already looks like a NBA veteran. And he's just 19.

Mudiay said the change to his body came out of necessity. The Chinese Basketball league is filled with NBA vets and very loose officiating. He just got beaten up over there.

"The biggest adjustment for me was the physicality," Mudiay told ESPN.com "It was ridiculous. They miss a lot of calls over there. I had to spend a lot of time in the weight room every single day. I dedicated myself to working on my body. At this point, I'm not trying to separate myself by saying this, but a lot of kids my age don't pay attention to their body this early. So by me going over there, that's another plus. By me focusing on my body, I feel like I'm more ready than most for the league."

The strength training hasn't just made him stronger. It's also made him more explosive. While Mudiay was always considered a good athlete, he wasn't necessarily a super explosive one. His athleticism showed up more in quickness than elevation. But after watching him go through the workout in LA, he's definitely improved his vertical.

Pair him up with the other elite point guards in this draft - Russell, Cameron Payne, Tyus Jones, Jerian Grant, Delon Wright - none of them have his combination of size, strength or athleticism.

Mudiay's also picked up an incredible work ethic the past year in China. He powers through the workout on Friday in ways that few young prospects can typically handle. I asked him about it after the workout and he credited his time in China with the improvement.

"I learned a lot over there," Mudiay said. "Their work ethic is just ridiculous. They work so hard ... I did two-a-days in China, going hard, going hard everyday. I came back here and understood what it was going to take. I take everything serious. It's a job now. It's not playing around like when you're a kid. I want to feed my family."

When it comes to the skills portion of the workout, Mudiay has also shown improvement. Especially on his jump shot.

Last year, Mudiay's jumper was one of the biggest concerns scouts had about his game. While he had made major strides over his senior season, it still was considered more of a liability than a strength. Mudiay shot 34 percent from 3 in his 12 games in China (13-for-38) though his sample size was very low. More concerning, he shot just 57 percent from the free throw line.

On Friday, his stroke looked much improved. Mudiay is never going to be Stephen Curry. But his jump shot goes in, a lot. He went through several stretches in the workout on Friday where he hit 4-of-5 in spot-up shooting from NBA 3-point range, from every position on the floor. He was even more accurate as he got to the college 3 and midrange game.

Shooting has been a major point of emphasis since hurting his ankle in November and the results are evident. He still needs to quicken the release of the jumper and work on consistency, but he's not a non-shooter in the mold of someone like Rajon Rondo. As for his free throws, he's working on them, but that definitely needs more work.

To quote a NBA scout who watched him in China, "His shot is OK. It's not broken. He can hit shots from anywhere on the floor. It's more about shot selection. At times he was forcing shots."

I'd say in the intervening six months his shot is better than OK. But to hit his ceiling, he'll need to continue to improve.

As for the other things -- ball handling, quickness and creativity -- Mudiay has it. He's going to impress the Lakers, Knicks, Sixers and Timberwolves in workouts. He'll impress them to the point they'll all seriously rethink where he is right now on their boards.

"He's so impressive," trainer Joe Abusnasser said after the workout. He compares Mudiay to a young Chauncey Billups and Baron Davis. "I've been doing this for a lot of years. So many of the kids we train don't know how to work. You have to push, push, push. Emmanuel, from Day One, knew how to work. He knows how to prepare. He wants to get better. He already acts and carries himself like a pro. The maturity is incredible. You forget he's 19. You don't see that everyday. And you especially don't see that when you factor in his physical tools."

Beyond his years

The on-the-court stuff is not the most impressive thing about Mudiay. It's the maturity he exudes when you sit down and talk with him.

There are a number of really great young people in this draft. Towns was incredibly likable, articulate and intelligent. So was Russell. But Mudiay talks like a 10-year veteran who just gets it.

When talking about his decision to skip SMU to play in China, he discussed his mother. His mother who raised him by herself after his father died when he was a year and a half old. His mother who moved him from the Congo to Dallas when he was 5. His mother who was still working 12-hour days to try to support the family. His mother that he didn't want to have to struggle anymore.

"A lot of people think it was because I couldn't get into SMU," Mudiay said. "But I got cleared to go to SMU. Everything was fine there. But I decided to help my mom out. She was struggling at the time.

"People can say what they say. I don't pay attention to that," Mudiay added. "I only care what God says to be honest with you. You are going to have critics in life. People are going to talk but you can't feed into that and I don't feed into that. I try to inspire other people by what I did. My mom had been the backbone of our family since I was born. My father passed away when I was one-and-a-half. She's been the man and the woman. She's my motivation. To see her work from seven to seven. I didn't want her to go on like that no more."

Mudiay said the decision also was a savvy basketball one. While it may not have helped his draft stock. What he wanted was to get better. In his mind, that meant playing against other pros, not other college kids.

"I wanted to focus solely on basketball," Mudiay said. "I had grown up playing with older people and I wanted the chance to play with professionals and see how I fared. I knew I wanted to play in the NBA, that was my goal. So why not try to challenge myself by going to a pro league? They play with NBA rules in China. [They have a] 24-second shot clock. I didn't want to come into the league as a kid. I wanted experience."

As for the experience of living in China itself?

"It's different. I don't know many people who can do it to be honest with you. There were grown men ready to go home -- some of them did go home. At the same time, I knew I had to do it. Basketball saved me. Every time I stepped onto the court, it didn't matter where I was at. Basketball is a universal language."

And when an ankle injury forced him to miss several months of basketball. He was alone, in a strange country and didn't even have that.

"That's when I had to find myself."

Find himself he did. After a year in China, he's stronger, faster and more skilled. He's more confident in his ability to play with the pros.

And he's humbled.

"I was in a poverty spot in Guangdong," Mudiay said. "I wasn't in Beijing or Shanghai. Here I am from Dallas, a big city. I don't take stuff for granted anymore. When I came back, I was so grateful for what I had."

And hungry.

"It's going to mean more to her [his mother] than me," Mudiay said when I asked him what it will mean to him to hear his name called on draft night. "I look at it like yes, it's an accomplishment. But the real work actually starts when your name gets called. After my name gets called I'm at zero. You got to put in the work. It's a celebration, but to me, you want to keep this feeling for a very long time. I haven't made anything. The real game has just started."

Several years ago a former NBA GM relayed to me a conversation he had with his top 10 pick the day after he was drafted.

The press conference was over and the GM invited the newly drafted rookie into his office to chat. At some point in the conversation the GM told the rookie that he'd be getting his first check soon and before he could finish the rookie responded, "Just make it out to the 'Max'", he said. "I'm going to be a superstar."

"It was at that moment," the GM told me, "that I knew I had made a mistake. We drafted the wrong person. He had no idea what type of work it would take to make that type of money. The amount of effort that the top players expend to be the best. He already thought he made it."

The rookie lasted four seasons in the NBA. Only one with the team that drafted him. He never averaged over 10 points per game.

The good ones -- the great ones -- are always hungry. Never satisfied. They're always aware their best selves lie somewhere beyond the horizon. No matter the destination at which they arrive, it is never final nor fulfilling.

The real work to become a NBA star happens away from the hype. It takes place in the shadows and takes years to achieve that greatness.

The process is invisible to most.

Emmanuel Mudiay gets that.

Invisible to you, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

On June 25, he'll be invisible no more.
Click to expand...
http://espn.go.com/nba/insider/stor...-emmanuel-mudiay-makes-case-no-1-overall-pick

Edit:
Several years ago a former NBA GM relayed to me a conversation he had with his top 10 pick the day after he was drafted.

The press conference was over and the GM invited the newly drafted rookie into his office to chat. At some point in the conversation the GM told the rookie that he'd be getting his first check soon and before he could finish the rookie responded, "Just make it out to the 'Max'", he said. "I'm going to be a superstar."

"It was at that moment," the GM told me, "that I knew I had made a mistake. We drafted the wrong person. He had no idea what type of work it would take to make that type of money. The amount of effort that the top players expend to be the best. He already thought he made it."

The rookie lasted four seasons in the NBA. Only one with the team that drafted him. He never averaged over 10 points per game.
Click to expand...
Time to do some homework and find out who this was. :lol:
 
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Wonder who that 4 year player is 
laugh.gif
 
jonny Flynn?

nevermind.. he averaged over 10 pts his rookie year and got 2 years with minny
 
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He's not working out for Minnesota either. It doesn't have to do with a promise, because he said from the outset he wouldn't be doing any workouts - which is a smart move in his position.

Flynn only played three years in the NBA, it can't be him.
 
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He said in his recent DX interview he was gonna workout for the top teams :smh:

Towns confirmed liar
 
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Carver said:
He said he'd want to do both interview and workout
Click to expand...

He said "I think you need to do both" which could be a way to saying "but if my agent says otherwise", but you're right that's a bit weird. Adam Zagoria of SNY.tv wrote a story confirming he wasn't working out for any teams, just interviewing with them.
 
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Yeah I remember those reports then I seen the interview less than a week ago. I think I misunderstood him :lol:
 
No I don't think you really did actually, I just went back and found that part of the video on DX and even though he says "I think you should do both", he seems to be answering the question as yes, I will be. Wording leaves it a bit up to interpretation, but I don't think you misunderstood his meaning.
 
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