Australian wunderkind Dante Exum remains the 2014 Draft’s international man of mystery. The public’s idea of Exum’s game is still primarily derived from an All-Tournament Team performance in the 2013 FIBA U-19 tournament, a stretch of just nine games that was watched by a mere fraction of basketball fans. His emergence coming on an international stage makes the 2014 FIBA World Cup a perfect setting for Exum’s first stumble.
To say Exum is not up to par at a higher level would be inaccurate; the curious thing is he has barely received a chance in the early stages of the World Cup. Australia has compiled a 3-1 record through their first four games of the tournament, toppling Mexico, Lithuania and South Korea, but their big name prospect has been relegated to Kent Bazemore duty. Exum has played just eight minutes per contest, and he hasn’t exactly lit it up when he’s been on the court. 25 percent shooting in mop-up duty is pretty poor for a hopeful franchise savior, even at such a young age.
Is that enough to to doubt whether Exum is more hype than substance? Not so fast. Equating Exum’s lack of play time and paltry numbers as a sign of future failure is disingenuous. The issue with evaluating Exum at this stage of the game is that he is more myth than man — closer to Paul Bunyan than Paul Millsap — and he has a long way to go before we can start processing him as anything more than a folk hero.
This time last year, the prospect with his name in the headlines was Canadian sensation Andrew Wiggins. His senior year mixtape from Huntington Prep lit the internet on fire, basketball outlets all across the internet calling him the best prospect since LeBron James. Two months later, Jabari Parker had seized the reigns of the hype machine — at least until Joel Embiid’s ballerina footwork turned color commentators into gushing school girls. Successes and failures from week to week provoked passionate claims from cynics and cheerleaders, but Wiggins ultimately ended up right where he started, selected No. 1 overall by the Cavaliers.
During his only college season, Wiggins was a victim of the same unrealistic expectations that plague Exum. The Godlike power of YouTube is frightening; without widespread access to prep school basketball footage or U-19 tournament games, prospects are boiled down to their highlight tapes. Young Zeus’ are created from the smoke, and when lightning bolts fail to emerge from their fingertips they’re labeled false idols. This can work in reverse as well — people want to believe in Giannis “Greek Freak” Antetokounmpo so badly that they sift through his pedestrian results and hoard the glimmers of hope.
When you’re working with limited resumes and seeing inklings rather than a finished product, the human response is to extrapolate what we know and apply it toward the future. The pessimist will denounce Exum for barely cracking the rotation of a nation on the fringes of FIBA’s top 10, while the optimist will point to moments of captivation in U-19’s and Vegas Summer League.
Sanity falls somewhere in the middle. It’s okay to be slightly disappointed that Exum is unable to force Andrej Lemanis to play him. This is a player who was considered a headliner of one of the most ballyhooed draft classes of the last 15 years. It’s not as if this is a national squad teeming with All-Stars — a point emphasized by Matthew Dellavedova’s heavy minutes load.
However, it’s easy to forget that he’s just 19 years old. While Exum will be expected to play heavy minutes and develop in Utah, the Aussies are focused on winning and winning alone right now. Lemanis needs to play the best players at his disposal, and while Exum has physical and mental tools that may turn him into a star, he isn’t that player quite yet. At the same age in 2004, LeBron made a minimal impact for Team USA, while a 20-year-old Carmelo Anthony was barely a blip on the radar. Deriving Exum’s future from a small series of international games at a young age is next to impossible.
Exum’s silent stretch during the World Cup isn’t so much a cause for concern as it is an opportunity to think about how we discuss young basketball players. Fans of the sport want to believe in the grandeur of stardom for each new wave, but dunking dreams don’t always crystallize as soon as we’d like. Rather than worry about the significance of Exum’s performance at the World Cup, remember how little we know about the places he’ll go.