Orlando Magic: Determining The NBA Prospects Of Melvin Ejim

It’s easy to lose sight sometimes just how hard it is to make it into the NBA.

Being a staple in the association means you are within the top tenth of 1 percent of all basketball players around the globe. After all, as Jalen Rose likes to exhaustively point out through his multitude of ESPN forums, the league only offers a scarce 450 jobs.

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For fringe NBA players, like Melvin Ejim, many times your professional fortunes are determined by uncontrollable fortuities like luck, team fit, and coaching preferences. An archaic way of survival that players of Ejim’s ilk are unfamiliar with to say the least, as they have always been the central figure of every team they have ever been on.

In the specific case of the chiseled 220-pound forward, who signed a partially guaranteed contract with the Orlando Magic in early August, he starred at Iowa State for four full seasons, scored 48 points and grabbed 18 rebounds in a game, and was honored with the 2014 Big 12 Player of the Year award during his senior campaign over the likes of Andrew Wiggins and Marcus Smart.

Make no bones about it, Melvin Ejim can ball.

Serving as a high-motor energizer who earned his stripes through creating havoc in transition and on the offensive boards, the Toronto, Ontario, native was a dominant multi-functioning force in college.

But, standing at a smidge under 6’7″ in shoes, Ejim was seen as somewhat of a tweener by NBA scouts — not quite long enough to play the four, but not quite skilled enough to changeover full-time into a swingman.

More specifically, while he is a willing, and at times, capable shooter — converting on approximately 35 percent and 33 percent of his 3-point attempts during his senior season in college, and last year, at the Eurocup/Italian league, respectively — his limited handle, creativity, and middling first-step hinders his prospects as an NBA-caliber perimeter player.

However, with the success of a player like Draymond Green have enjoyed over the last couple of seasons, suddenly, a tweener does not have the negative connotation attached to its name among league circles as it once did.

An undersized power forward like Ejim, who possess the quickness and relentlessness to defend and switch all pick-and-rolls 1 through 4, has quickly become the latest craved commodity.

Much like the Dancing Bear (Green), Ejim also own a sizeable wingspan (6’11”) and a barrel-chested frame. As well, he is an effort-based player who prides himself on out-working his, most often times, bigger interior counterparts. In fact, he respectively averaged over 3.2 and 4.2 offensive rebounds per 40 minutes as a senior at Iowa State and as an import for Virtus Roma.

He’s the type of player that can impact a game without having a single play called for him.

And thus far, during his ongoing summer stint with the Canadian national team — where he has outplayed and leapfrogged NBA bigs like Robert Sacre and Magic teammate Andrew Nicholson on the squad’s depth chart — his intensity and level of functional athleticism positively changes the tone of each game every time Ejim checks in wearing the Maple Leaf red and white.

Announcers, coaches, and viewers alike have all praised his unwavering motor and the implicit toughness he’s injected into a very inexperienced and soft spoken team Canada.

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However, what makes Draymond such a detonating player in the modern NBA is his ability to create and playmake off the bounce when facing a shifting and ill-positioned defense.

The D, motor, and intensity is what earned Green his court time, his versatility as an offensive threat is what garners a max contract.

The playmaking and creativity aspects of the game, Ejim currently lacks.

In addition, Green is surrounded by, perhaps, the best 3-point shooting duo in NBA history in Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson; thereby, masking some of his inconsistencies as a floor spacer, and congruently, allowing the former Michigan State Spartan to operate in countless 3-on-2 situations with the undivided attention and anxiety-inducing fear Curry receives and engenders as a pick-and-roll negotiator.

For Ejim, he’ll be entering training camp on a team devoid of said outside shooting. Sure, the Magic have a gluttony of potential-filled, young talents, like Victor Oladipo, Elfrid Payton, Aaron Gordon, Tobias Harris, and Nikola Vucevic, but none of their core has proven yet to be a competent outside shooter —  although, they are hopeful rookie Mario Hezonja can change all of that.

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Having guys like Oladipo, Gordon, and Ejim roaming the wings will most certainly shore up their defense, but it will also, theoretically, decimate their floor spacing — especially if Payton, a 26 percent 3-point shooter, is manning the point.

To establish a concrete role on the team, and to avoid being just another D-League fodder, Ejim must prove useful in the second unit alongside the likes of Hezonja and Evan Fournier. I

f he provides his trademark motor and defensive intensity beside the two European sharpshooters, while capitalizing on the attention and spacing the aforementioned duo will most likely inspire, Ejim’s versatility — both, offensively and defensively — could secure him a role on the team’s second unit as a high-energy, junk-yard dog-type stretch/hybrid four.

Ten years ago, most teams would scoff at the idea of giving a 6’7″ power forward with no post moves a camp invite, but in today’s NBA, where defensive elasticity and positional interchangeability is held at the highest of premiums, Melvin Ejim might just defy the odds and earn himself a defined role in the association.

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