This is the first installment in a series wherein I, a Laker fan with League Pass and nothing to do in life, spend each week watching an NBA rookie that I am fond of (which is all of them*). Then, I write about the week he’s had for an audience of fans of that rookie’s team. It combines two of the most powerful forces in the universe: my boundless enthusiasm for basketball prospects, and my futile/never-abating consternation at their struggles.
All negative things that I say about your team are falsehoods born of inveterate bias. All praise that I give is accurate. If you agree with something, highlight it and then say "RT" out loud to yourself, especially if you are in public. This will make you socially successful. Believe me; I have never knowingly been on a date.
I have loved Emmanuel Mudiay since he was an apparent SMU commit. His life since those days has been interesting as hell, and through it all I have maintained 100%** confidence that he is as solid a bet to be a productive player as is possible for a non-superstar-tier prospect. But until this past week, I had never watched him play several full-length games in a row.
Mudiay's season has been messy even by normal rookie standards, but I feel like I chose an especially sloppy stretch of time to do this piece on him. The Denver Nuggets have lately been on what has proved to be a trying - and yet somewhat rewarding - road trip that has seen some (not all!) of Mudiay's worst statistical performances of the season. Let's talk about them, yaaay:
Monday 11/30 vs. Bucks
29 MIN / 3-11 FGM-A / 1-5 3PM-A / 1 REB / 4 AST / 1 STL / 0 BLK / 5 TO / 2 PF / 10 PTS
This first game was a real stinker for Mudiay. At one point, he interrupted Chris Marlowe’s compliments on a relatively competent string of offensive possessions by dribbling the ball off his own dang self and out of bounds. Unprompted. He actively hurt the Nuggets' chances to win, although not many of his teammates did much better. It was at times hard to tell whether his inefficiency was more his own fault or that of the schematic failures of a roster piled high with purportedly savvy veterans like Danilo Gallinari, Jameer Nelson, J.J. Hickson, and Mike Miller.
Let me put it this way. I am in the habit of gesticulating insanely at my TV screen when I am able to tell what chord should come next in a team’s offensive melody – what pass should be made, when the screener should slip, when the weak side wing should cut, et cetera. For large chunks of this game, my hand just hovered motionless. There was just nothing for anyone to do. The bigs showcased no aptitude for post play or for spacing the floor; would-be cutters were often swamped by Giannis Antetokounmpo or Khris Middleton; ball handlers could not for the life of them see over the defense. The Nuggets finished with 22 turnovers and 19 assists. Occasionally Randy Foye, Nikola Jokic or Darrell Arthur would do something fun off the ball, but for the most part Mudiay simply had nobody to pass to. That is partially his fault; his undisguised terror of the Bucks’ aggressive hedging behavior sure didn’t help anything, and I feel pretty confident that Jokic would make a fun 4-on-3 big given the chance. But there needs to be more off-ball creativity on everyone’s part. It’s always a million times easier said than done.
Mike Malone’s offense is fifth-worst in the league right now; I don’t want to say that’s all his fault, because he is working with an extremely hinky roster full of non- or at best pseudo-shooters with idiosyncratic playstyles. Also, I adore what he did in his brief tenure in Sacramento. But this game was ugly, and Mudiay looked unhappy. The magic touch Malone showed with an equally ill-conceived Kings roster was not in evidence.
Wednesday 12/2 vs. Bulls
30 MIN / 2-13 FGM-A / 0-2 3PM-A / 3 REB / 7 AST / 2 STL / 1 BLK / 2 TO / 1 PF / 4 PTS
This game wasn’t so bad, even if Mudiay’s shooting numbers were even worse than they were in the last game. I’m much more interested in seeing him keep his turnovers down than I am in how well he scores every night. He kept his head against a top-5 defense. That’s encouraging!
Thursday 12/3 vs. Raptors
32 MIN / 2-9 FGM-A / 1-2 3PM-A / 3 REB / 9 AST / 0 STL / 0 BLK / 3 TO / 2 PF / 5 PTS
I honestly don’t think this game was that bad, either. The 3:1 TO ratio is downright acceptable. He had a great plus-minus relative to the rest of the team. Once again, big ups!
But there were several things that bothered me, and I’m going to kvetch about them. On a key transition play early in the 4th quarter, Mudiay didn’t keep up with the ball-handler and surrendered an easy layup. Too often on defense does he merely follow his man rather than guarding him. Malone held him out of the hotly-contested conclusion of the game after that play, which I at first found a little draconian, but I may have been misreading the cause-and-effect there. Mudiay was not in foul trouble, but he did end up with a normal amount of minutes, and there could have been some low-level injury I missed or some strategic gear-shift that accounted for his benching without being an obvious demerit for him.
I was also bothered by how Scott Hastings complained about pretty much every single call that went against the Nuggets. Overall, though, I enjoyed my time in the company of the Nuggets broadcast team, even through their gleeful abuse of my eardrums with their pronunciation of "Joffrey." Like, your ear for French is not good, and that’s okay, because neither is mine. Let’s all drop the charade and pronounce it like it’s Game of Thrones.
I did enjoy Malone unleashing a Nelson-Mudiay-Barton-Miller-Lauvergne small-ball lineup for one short stretch. That was legitimately interesting. Lauvergne can really do some things, Miller pump-faked and punished closeouts like a youngster, and Barton might be actually the most enjoyable player to watch on the entire team.
Saturday 12/5 vs. 76ers
31 MIN / 4-12 FGM-A / 1-3 3PM-A / 5 REB / 6 AST / 1 STL / 0 BLK / 7 TO / 1 PF / 10 PTS
Another small-ball sighting in this game! This time Kenneth Faried rounded out the lineup instead of Lauvergne. Mudiay as a de facto shooting guard is a pleasant change of pace. I think I may have even seen him cut baseline once or twice!
By and large, though, he was back to his panic-stricken, ball-surrendering ways. He committed one of the dumbest turnovers I’ve ever seen by just chucking the ball out in front of him in transition, allowing Nik Stauskas to simply pick it up like a neglected apple at sunset in the orchard. Girls and boys, this was not in any sense an attempted pass. Mudiay was aping some of that LeBron James early-acceleration catch-up-with-the-ball-at-half-court-under-a-full-head-of-steam goodness, except he did it without registering the presence of one of the least savvy/opportunistic defenders in the NBA (sorry, Nik. You are forever in my maize-and-blue heart, but you are useless). I hate when players I like don’t think about where they’re throwing the ball. God, this turnover made me so mad.
AND THEN HE IMMEDIATELY COMMITTED ANOTHER ONE. TARNATION.
The big picture
I’ve whined a lot here, since Mudiay played pretty badly this past week, but that does a disservice to how much I like him and how good I think he can be. He attacks the rim with a slippery abandon more evocative of Derrick Rose than his more frequent comp Russell Westbrook. He wants to be a true pick-and-roll killer, you can see it. He fires kickouts to shooters from deep in the Mines of Moria. I’m not even that worried about his rickety-ass jump shot or his defense. His skill set just fits in the modern NBA, regardless of whether he’ll ever get buckets from the perimeter.
Many of his foibles are fixable rookie-ish things – e.g. picking up his dribble way (way, way) too readily, not knowing what counts as a good shot, passing without sound reasons, etc. He is aware that long-range shots and contested pull-ups don’t work well for him, but his angle of attack for layups is sometimes problematic. He takes far too many of those little falling-away pseudo-floaters that result from being too eager to avoid contact. Veteran defenders intercept his too-obvious passes like parents stopping their toddler from throwing his sippy cup for the 8705th time.
Point is, these are all things that have happened to just about every rookie point guard in the history of this immaculate sport. He’ll be more than fine.
I just hope I can say the same for the team around him.
*except Mario Hezonja. Great-white-hope-lookin’-ass no-defense motherfucker.
**62%
