I don’t understand. How is a guy who shot well below 40% for his career up to this point all of a sudden shooting above 50% from the field? And don’t talk to me about “improvement” either. That’s just a buzzword for people to use when they’re making excuses for why a guy shouldn’t be called a bust. Improvement doesn’t exist, so there’s no way Mudiay could have experienced it.
If Mudiay keeps this up, I think it’s a guarantee that he’ll be in the league after his rookie contract comes up at the end of this season. Before this season, I thought he was just going to be another NBA washout. A high-profile washout, but a washout nonetheless, joining the ranks of Rashad Vaughn, R.J. Hunter, and Chris McCullough as the other guys from the first round of that draft who didn’t quite make it. Now that’s he’s actually earning his minutes instead of just being gifted them because of his “potential”, his NBA viability is much more…viable.
Now let’s hope that Mudiay doesn’t regress. Before, I didn’t care if he fell out of the league, but now that he’s been decent for this stretch at the beginning of the season, a regression on his end would be extra-disappointing.