The Exum Effect: How Emmanuel Mudiay is Helped (And Hurt) Playing Overseas

Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Set to be the crown jewel of Larry Brown’s revamped SMU squad, Emmanuel Mudiay was regarded as one of the top prospects for the 2015 Draft, standing alongside headliners like Jahlil Okafor and Karl Towns. Instead, Mudiay decided to blaze his own trail and leave SMU in his rear-view, signing a contract with China’s Guangdong Southern Tigers in July. He won’t be plying his trade within the familiar confines of the NCAA, but Mudiay’s decision to take his talents to China for a year may end up crystallizing that lofty status.

In the early goings of the 2014-2015 season, Mudiay has impressed for Guangdong, showing off the tools that won favor of scouts all over the country. However, most of his work will go unnoticed by the public this season. There’s no visibility substitute for being broadcast over ESPN airwaves, even if the internet has made it significantly easier to follow sports in other countries. The fear of fading into obscurity is not a small detail for an 18 year old looking to become a household name.

In search of a better life for his family, Mudiay has embraced that unknown. While there’s no indication that his decision was influenced by outside forces, Dante Exum’s stable stock last season has to be reassuring. Though he wasn’t the first top prospect to spend his final amateur season in relative obscurity, Exum provided a readymade blueprint for Mudiay last season. While contemporaries Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker were on a national stage week-to-week having their games picked apart, the Australian guard got to rest behind a dominating performance at the U-19 World Championships in 2013. He started and ended the year as a consensus top-five prospect, despite a dearth of meaningful basketball or public appearances.

Exum’s unchanged stock tapped into the broader idea of potential that has become (in many cases) more important than current-day production. The harshest criticism lobbed at Exum — if you could call it harsh — is that we had no idea whether he would be good against NBA-caliber competition. That’s a rather terrifying assessment for a guy so beloved in draft circles, though at least it was accurate. Compare that to the type of criticism faced by Wiggins (“no killer instinct”) and Parker (“lacks athleticism”), and you’d probably  conclude that it’s better to be a mystery than labeled incorrectly.

Theoretically Mudiay should benefit from similar circumstances, while Okafor, Towns and the like go through the typical ups and downs of a young athlete — or young anything for that matter. This is particularly beneficial in a year where the wing and guard crop is bunched together and prone to drastic changes by season’s end. While players like Justise Winslow, Kelly Oubre and Stanley Johnson fight for supremacy, Mudiay will remain in poll position barring disaster.

Unlike Exum, Mudiay will have a chance to get used to the grind of being a professional for a full year before coming to the NBA. Rather than being under the strict watch of the NCAA, he can grow accustomed to a professional lifestyle and all that comes with it. Veterans often cite this as a major part of the maturation process, so in this sense Mudiay can get ahead of his peers. Learning to balance basketball as a job while exploring other opportunities personally and financially — all while living in a foreign country — will help him grow as a player and a person.

It’s not all peaches and cream. By all accounts Mudiay is a plus-level athlete that will perform well in combine-like settings, but the lack of tape against his draft peers will amplify the stakes for his personal workouts leading into the draft. It’s bad enough that these one-off events are used to sum up an athletic profile 20 years in the making, and it will be even worse for a player like Mudiay who some scouts will feel like has “more to prove” relative to his competition. This attitude may be fading, but it exists nonetheless.

In addition, it’s hard to tell how Mudiay’s game will develop or be altered during his year in China. I’m not a point guard purist or somebody who fears he’ll develop “bad habits” that aren’t correctable, but it’s worth considering if a ball-dominating approach with Guangdong will negatively impact Mudiay down the line. His role with the Tigers will be sizable if the largest overseas contract ever for a high school player is any indication, and it’s hard to say whether that will serve him best. Developing problem areas like his outside shooting and half-court offensive ability might be easier if he was placed into different roles and able to see how things look from different places in the offense.

I’m not sure those should be considerations in Mudiay’s mind, and perhaps the most fascinating part of this grand experiment is the potential for trickle down to other draft classes. One player flourishing by staying out of the spotlight could be apropos of nothing (and the Exum-Mudiay connection isn’t exactly 1:1), but a successful season and stable draft stock could convince more top American players to chase the check for their first season out of high school.

The one-and-done system is a mockery that almost exclusively benefits the NBA and its evaluators, so if you’re a potential top-10 pick who can command top dollar for your services, why not test the waters? If the player’s preference is to get a year of the college experience and learn under a top amateur coach, there’s no shame in following a time-tested formula that produced countless NBA greats. However, there’s something to be said for taking control of one’s fate rather than letting others dictate it for you. Having the freedom to see another part of the world and make a truckload of money while locking down future earning potential is unimaginably great for a young kid.

There’s no way of knowing if Mudiay will maintain a stranglehold on his assumed top-five status, but the conclusion of his foreign tour should tell us a lot about a potentially untapped path for elite young prospects.