There has been quite a bit of analysis of Emmanuel Mudiay’s decision to go pro overseas rather than matriculate to SMU and legendary head coach Larry Brown. Many people see this as the future of the star basketball player, and something we should expect to see more of going forward.
I personally doubt this for many reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty assimilating such a large culture change at such a tender age, and also the fact that it makes playing in front of family and friends nearly impossible. There are some driven and-or adventurous young people who will be willing to do this, no doubt, but I suspect they will be few. For the ones that do opt for an overseas path, almost none of their decisions will have anything to do with not getting paid to play in college, if that in fact remains the rule after the O’Bannon decision finishes winding its way through the court system.
Mike DeCourcy has more on this:
Please, do not start with the fantasy that this is going to lead to a flood of American prospects heading overseas for a year because the NBA will not allow them to enter its draft until they’ve been out of high school a year. And don’t expect that, if commissioner Adam Silver is successful negotiating a change in that policy to two years out of high school, that the trend will accelerate.
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What so many fail to understand about European basketball is it is not a finishing school for prep athletes.
It’s a cutthroat competition in which the stakes are serious and sometimes extreme. A teenager who arrives at a U.S. college expecting a single year on campus before entering the NBA draft is a coveted "one-and-done" player. The same kid shows up on a European club roster committed to departing after a single season is more of a pain-in-the-behind.
Listen to DeCorcy, o high-schoolers. He’s talking to you like a Dutch uncle.
We have come to think of American players as exceptional, vastly superior to the kind of player produced overseas. Even these recent years of NBA drafts that show ever-increasing levels of non-American talent being drafted have not disabused us of this notion. Too many American basketball fans assume that a great high-school player can just waltz over to Europe and become an instant sensation.
Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler both found out otherwise, and let’s face it — these European guys are not in love with having mercenary American high-schoolers over in their league with no intent to do anything but earn a few bucks and mark time. European coaches do not have a vested interest in developing players that are only going to be around a year or two, unlike their college counterparts like John Calipari, Bill Self, Mike Krzyzewski and, yes, Larry Brown.
So this decision by Mudiay is fraught with peril for his career. It is said that both academic issues and family finances played a role in his decision, and I think that is likely. However, as good as the decision may look on paper, both Jennings and Tyler had bad experiences overseas, and that’s the only recent data we have.
Maybe Mudiay’s will be different, but I wouldn’t count on it. But what I would count on is not seeing a flood of young players try this route. There will be a few, for sure, because when you’re young, you can overcome anything, or so we imagine. But in the end, the best course for any NBA aspirant is to spend time in college. That may change at some point, but right now, it’s the closest thing there is to a sure thing.