Orlando Magic: What If Emmanuel Mudiay Is Available This Summer?
By Luke Duffy
It is perhaps a little bit early to be talking about this year’s NBA Draft already. After all, the playoffs are still on the horizon and there’s so much to play for. The Orlando Magic however, are a team that is looking to the future already.
This season hasn’t exactly been a lost one, there was a brief playoff run before the turn of the year. It has also been great to see the continued growth of players like Nikola Vucevic and Victor Oladipo. The small matter of holding onto Tobias Harris beyond this season will need resolving as well.
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But what if, when the draft does eventually roll around, the Magic are faced with a tough proposition?
A couple of events over the last couple of weeks got me to thinking about the ways teams draft players. Some go for positional need, while others go for talent, regardless of position. As a small aside, I’ve kept an eye on incoming rookie Emmanuel Mudiay’s professional season in China as much as possible.
I’m not going to go into detail about what I think about this guy, just know that I like his game a lot, despite occasionally reminding me of Tyreke Evans. This piece did a great job chronicling his year abroad playing ball, and it got me to thinking. What if, and it is a big if but still, Mudiay is still on the board when the Magic are drafting this summer?
As much talent as it appears he has, there’s no guarantee he goes first, or even top three in the draft. Again, it depends on whether the teams drafting go for need or talent when picking. If the Philadelphia 76ers pick before Orlando as well, all bets are truly off.
The Kentucky duo of Karl-Anthony Towns and Willie Cauley-Stein could both go before the big guard. What we can generally agree on, though, is that Orlando will pick fairly high when the time comes. But what if Mudiay is still on the board at that time?
The reason this thought even entered my head was after seeing what the 76ers did with Michael Carter-Williams. The reigning Rookie of the Year, the point guard was moved just before the trade deadline to the Milwaukee Bucks. It puzzled a lot of people, including myself.
Yes, Carter-Williams has glaring holes in his game, but this is only his second year in the league and enough people felt he was the best newcomer last year to make him the Rookie of the Year.
Which brings me back to Mudiay and the Magic. Orlando already has a point guard it has invested in for the future, Elfrid Payton. Like Carter-Williams, he too has elements of his game that are far below average, most notably his shooting both from the floor and the charity stripe.
Carter-Williams was meant to be there for the long term and they moved on from him pretty quick, despite playing mostly well for that team (that triple-double against the LeBron James-led Miami Heat his first week in the league still sticks out to me). If the Magic are faced with the opportunity to draft Mudiay, do they do the same thing?
At this point I need to stick up for Payton here. As recently as last week I stuck up for the guy, pointing out how his first year in the pros has been a turbulent one for a couple of reasons. Being a big Rajon Rondo fan myself the comparisons are easy to make, and I love the fact that he came into this league ready to play professional level defence.
I certainly don’t want to move away from Payton and hope that he remains a Magic player for a long time to come. That potential defensive partnership with Oladipo is tantalizing. But if Mudiay was tangled in front of me like he could potentially be to this team, I’d have to think about it.
It’s somewhat hard to gauge exactly how good Mudiay was this season, as he was playing for one of the best teams in China. A lot of the players marking him as well would have either been players who didn’t make it in America, or natives of the country. In other words, on some nights the competition would have been below what a Kentucky or a Virginia can bring to the table for example.
The guy is 6’5″ but still has great handles. He’s a little bit too in love with his outside shooting, but he’s also pretty efficient at knocking down these shots as well. Defensively, because of his size alone, he has to have a higher ceiling than the hardworking Payton.
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Despite the fact guards can be that bit smaller than other players on the court, having a bigger one may actually be the way forward as well.
People forget John Wall of the Washington Wizards is a big guard himself, and he’s not alone. Thinking further down the line, a team could play small ball and move Mudiay to the small forward position if they were that way inclined. The point is, you can’t teach height, and when you’ve got considerable skills to match, it makes a player like that hard to turn down.
Ultimately, it probably won’t be a decision the Orlando Magic have to make. Besides, in Payton they have a point guard who, despite his current shortcomings, fits the system in place here quite well. But Mudiay could be a game changer, and I’m not sure Orlando has any of those players.
Vucevic is quietly brilliant while Oladipo looks more and more like a second option as time goes by. Players like that don’t come around that often.
If Orlando does go ahead and draft Mudiay, it’ll be a move I’m fully behind, even if it means some harsh and unfair treatment on Payton, who would probably be moved as a result. But when decisions like these have to be (potentially) made, it shows the team is headed in the right direction again. It would be a tough but good decision for the team to have to make.
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