Townsend: What will NBA draft hold for Emmanuel Mudiay after skipping SMU for China?

UNIVERSITY PARK — It probably isn’t great for his sanity, but SMU basketball coach Larry Brown continues to wonder, “What if?”

What if 6-5 point guard Emmanuel Mudiay had not decided to turn pro last July? What if, as originally planned, he had enrolled at SMU and played for a Mustangs team that went 27-7 without him?

“Can you imagine?” Brown said. “If we’d have had him on our team, we might have been playing for the national championship. In my heart, I believe we’d have been as good as anybody.”

Professor Brown won’t ever be able to prove his hypothesis, but the what-if continues to tantalize, especially at times like this. The NBA draft is Thursday. Most projections have 19-year-old Mudiay, the Congo-born Prime Prep Academy product, being selected among the top seven.

If there’s any solace for SMU fans with long memories, it’s that this draft night shouldn’t be quite as painful as that of June 26, 1991. That’s when another local high school product and projected Mustang, Skyline’s Larry Johnson, was selected No. 1 overall by Charlotte.

Johnson, who had orally committed to SMU but never signed because of concerns he wouldn’t qualify academically, was coming off four college seasons.

Johnson had been national player of the year in both of his junior college seasons and one of his two seasons at UNLV. He’d played in two Final Fours and won the 1990 NCAA championship.

Mudiay never intended to play more than one college season. There reportedly were concerns he wouldn’t qualify academically to enroll at SMU, but Brown, Mudiay and his high school coach, Ray Forsett, continue to say that he would have gotten into SMU and that his only motivation for turning pro was to help his family financially.

Instead of starring for the Mustangs, he signed a $1.2 million contract to play in the Chinese Basketball Association. Instead of spending a season under Hall of Fame coach Brown, Mudiay sprained an ankle and played just 12 games for the Guangdong Tigers.

Consequently, he is regarded as the most mysterious of this year’s lottery-pick (top 14) candidates — undeniably gifted physically but largely unproven.

On the night Mudiay announced his decision to forgo college, Brown told The News that while he understood and supported Mudiay's decision, he had no doubt that had Mudiay played his freshman season at SMU, he would be the 2015 draft's No. 1 overall pick.

“I’m just hopeful that still happens,” Brown said that night.

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Draft prospects

And now? Most projections have big men Karl-Anthony Towns of Kentucky and Jahlil Okafor of Duke being the top two picks. Minnesota has the first selection, the Los Angeles Lakers the second.

Towns and Okafor are both 6-11. Towns is listed at 250 pounds, Okafor 270. Both offer the interior presence that NBA teams crave. Mudiay simply cannot measure up to Towns and Okafor in that sense, though he’s added about 10 pounds of muscle and now weighs 195.

“He looks real good,” Forsett said of Mudiay, whom he coached at Grace Prep Academy as a freshman, before player and coach moved to now-defunct Prime Prep. “He’s been working his butt off. His body has changed, and he’s been working, trying to fulfill his dreams.

“I think it went great for him over in China,” Forsett added. “He matured a lot personally. I think it was, in all, a good experience for him.”

But there’s another intangible helping NBA scouts evaluate Towns and Okafor more easily than Mudiay: exposure at the highest level of amateur competition. Okafor’s Blue Devils and Towns’ Wildcats both played in the Final Four just 2 1/2 months ago.

Two other projected high picks, 6-5 guard D’Angelo Russell of Ohio State and 6-6 forward Justise Winslow of Duke, have a similar advantage as draft night approaches — even though Mudiay has been out of high school the same amount of time as Towns, Okafor, Russell and Winslow.

“If we’d had Emmanuel [last season], he would have been the biggest story in basketball, I think,” Brown said. “Because you expect Kentucky, Ohio State and Duke to do well. They have unbelievable programs. But to see how relevant we would have been, it would have been something.

“I think Emmanuel would have been a brand, just like [Andrew] Wiggins and [Jabari] Parker,” Brown added, invoking the names of last year’s top two picks.

Though some of his comments might hint otherwise, Brown wasn’t in an I-told-you-so frame of mind while discussing Mudiay on a recent morning in SMU’s Crum Basketball Center.

It’s clear that Brown still thinks highly of Mudiay and his family — which includes brother Jean-Micheal Mudiay, who played basketball for the Mustangs and graduated from SMU in May with a degree in sports management.

When Emmanuel decided to turn pro, his family originally planned for Jean-Micheal to accompany him to China. Brown, however, convinced the family that it would be best for all if Jean-Micheal played his senior season at SMU and graduated.

Meanwhile, Mudiay’s mother, Therese Kabeya, oldest brother Stephane and a cousin accompanied him to China. He played only 10 regular-season games before suffering the ankle injury. He returned to play two playoff games. He averaged 18 points, 6.3 rebounds and 5.9 assists.

When LeBron James was still in high school, Brown got to know James and his childhood friend Maverick Carter, who ultimately became James’ business manager and chief brander. Brown believes Jean-Micheal could ultimately play a similar role for Emmanuel, except in this case they’re brothers.

“I wanted him to stay and finish [school] because I thought, as bright and loyal as he is, it would be a neat thing to have him there as a resource for his brother,” Brown said.

Obviously, the SMU staff recruited Jean-Micheal from two-year Western Texas College in Snyder to improve their chances of landing Emmanuel. Brown remains glad that they did.

“I think in the long run, it was a win-win,” he said.

How so, given that Emmanuel, after signing a letter of intent, never enrolled at SMU? Because, Brown noted, having a recruit of Mudiay’s caliber announce on national TV that he was choosing SMU gave the program immeasurable credibility and recruiting momentum.

Two years earlier, the program’s credibility received a local boost when McDonald’s All-American Keith Frazier of Kimball signed with the Mustangs. Historically, SMU has had difficulty attracting top Dallas ISD players.

“Half these kids didn’t even know where the hell SMU was,” Brown said. “Now we’ve got kids coming over to our gym and playing, working out.”

Brown said that as more basketball fans learn of Mudiay’s back story, they will understand why he decided to bypass college. They’ll learn that Mudiay’s father died of a heart attack when Emmanuel was a child in the Congo, and that Kabeya grew vegetables and coffee to support her kids.

Amid war and the constant threat of instability, Kabeya moved her family to the United States in 2001.

“Even though Emmanuel didn’t come here, when people read more about what that family has been through and what they had to overcome, it’s only going to help us,” Brown said of SMU’s program.

One look was enough

The first time Brown saw Mudiay play when he was a sophomore at Prime Prep, where Brown had gone to watch older prospects Karviar Shepherd and Jordan Mickey.

“I took one look at him and he kind of blew me away, just because of his feel for the game and his presence, his physicality,” Brown recalled.

Brown said that he and Forsett shared a concern about the lack of consistent top-tier talent Mudiay faced in high school. Brown said Forsett asked him to speak to Mudiay about maintaining focus and effort no matter the competition.

“So I grabbed Emmanuel and said, ‘Let me explain something to you,’” Brown recalled. “‘You’re going into the NBA, and the point guard position right now is maybe the most important in the league because of the quality and depth in that position.’

“I said, ‘On Monday you’re going to guard Derrick Rose. On Tuesday you’re going to guard Russell Westbrook. Wednesday you’re going to take the day off the travel. And then you’ve got Chris Paul and [Steph] Curry coming in.’ ”

Brown said he also invoked the likes of John Wall, Kyrie Irving, Michael Conley, Tony Parker and Jeff Teague, adding, “If you’re not ready to play every single night at that position, you’re going to get embarrassed.” Brown said Mudiay seemed to understand and raised his game accordingly.

Last March, Mudiay told The News: "I don't want to go to the NBA and just make it. I want to be the best that ever did it."

Brown said he believed Mudiay was ready for the NBA coming out of high school. NBA collective bargaining agreement rules, however, prohibit players from becoming eligible for the draft until they are 19 and at least one year out of high school.

On Thursday night, the basketball world will find out whether forgoing college and going to China was the right decision in terms of helping Mudiay’s draft status. How well, if at all, it prepared him for the NBA probably won’t be known until his rookie season begins.

“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Brown said. “I still don’t believe it was a good idea.

“But understanding the circumstances of why he went, I don’t fault him at all. I’ve always supported that decision and still do.”

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Local lottery pick history

On Thursday night, Prime Prep Academy product Emmanuel Mudiay and Myles Turner (Euless Trinity/Texas) could become the latest local players to become NBA lottery picks. The NBA draft lottery, which determines the draft order of the 14 non-playoff teams, didn’t come into existence until 1985, but for the purposes of this list we’re including all North Texas high school products drafted among the top 14 since the inaugural draft of 1947: