NBA Draft Profile: Emmanuel Mudiay

By Kels Dayton
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Updated: May 26, 2015

Photo: NBA/Getty Images

There was a time in young Emmanuel Mudiay’s life when the biggest thing on his mind wasn’t which NBA team he was going to play for, or whether or not he’d be the first point guard taken in the 2015 draft.

As a child growing up in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mudiay and his family had to be more concerned with staying out of danger and figuring out where their next meal was coming from.

“I can remember bullets hitting our gate,” Emmanuel’s older brother Stephane told the Dallas News. “I would just hide under the bed all night, nonstop.”

Emmanuel’s father died when he was just a toddler, and from then on the family needed to rely on help from friends–and sometimes luck–just to get by. “Every day, we prayed for something to happen, and it would,” Stephane said. “Sometimes, random people would come by the house and drop off a bag of rice.”

When Emmanuel was five, the family was finally able to get asylum to the U.S., though they did have to spend a year without their mother. They settled in Arlington, Texas, where mother Kabeya works as an aide at a nursing home.

Since moving to the U.S., basketball has become a way of life for the Mudiay brothers. Stephane played collegiately at Texas Western, and Jean-Michael played at Western Texas College before transferring to SMU (likely as a recruiting chip, which helped Larry Brown land Emmanuel. Oh, college athletics).

Emmanuel committed to SMU, but after finding out that he would have trouble qualifying academically, opted instead for a year of professional basketball in China, where he starred (when he played) for the Guangdong Southern Tigers. Though he saw time in just 12 games due to an ankle injury, the youngest Mudiay brother was impressive, averaging 18 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5 assists and 1.6 steals per game.

NBA scouts love his speed, size, decision-making ability and passing skill. He’s not a great shooter, but has a decent stroke and can improve. His athleticism is off-the-charts, and he’s already got an NBA body. Mudiay may not be a “classic” point guard in the Chris Paul or, if we may-John Stockton sense, but he’s a part of the new breed of NBA PG’s, in the way that Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook are. He’s big, has a natural scoring ability, and can read the floor extremely well.

Watch him school a bunch of Chinese guys: