Nuggets Film Room: How Emmanuel Mudiay broke out in South Beach

 

The 2016-17 NBA season has not been kind to Emmanuel Mudiay.

The second-year point guard has had his sophomore season clouded by injuries, the emergence of Jamal Murray and the resurgence of Jameer Nelson which eventually led to Mudiay getting removed from the rotation entirely. Mudiay did himself no favors throughout this season, as his numbers actually dropped from his rookie year after he didn’t come back from the summer improved in many of the areas he needed to be.

Mudiay’s play has been bordering on awful for Denver this season and it’s factual that the Nuggets became a better team when they gave Nelson the starting point guard role. There is no arguing that notion but there is a case to be made that Mudiay has not been given an opportunity to play a style of offense that accents his strengths — until Denver’s latest win in Miami.

Before we get into what made Mudiay successful, it’s important to understand what contributed to his struggles over his first two seasons in Denver.

When the Nuggets selected Mudiay at No. 7 overall in the 2015 draft, they had high hopes for the young point guard. They rebranded the organization under the moniker of “It’s A New Day” and Mudiay was portrayed as the savior of the franchise, which in hindsight, was not the best decision.

Mudiay had played in just 12 games for Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association before his NBA debut. To ask an 18-year-old, at the time, to revitalize a franchise was not fair to him, or the Nuggets organization.

To add to the pressure, Mudiay was then asked to produce within an offense that was starved of shooting and spacing and was the antithesis to his most effective traits. Mudiay was a shooting-deficient point guard on a shooting-deficient roster and it displayed his biggest flaws for everyone to see.

Predictably, Mudiay’s rookie campaign was less than ideal. He struggled to finish at the rim, turned the ball over at an alarming rate, and shot just 36 percent from the field and 32 percent from three-point distance. He showed flashes of the player he could one day become but overall struggled the majority of the season. There was still an abundance of hope for him to develop into a franchise cornerstone.

That hope began to dissipate throughout the first half of the year as Mudiay continued to struggle in the same ways he was during his rookie season but, again, there were no favors done for Mudiay in terms of roster fit. To start the season the Nuggets were experimenting with a front court that featured both Nikola Jokic and Jusuf Nurkic, which severely congested the lane for Mudiay. Once the twin-tower experiment had ended, Mudiay still was asked to produce with both Kenneth Faried and Nurkic clogging the paint.

Eventually, a back injury sidelined Mudiay and Nelson was tasked with filling the starting point guard role, a role in which he has held onto for the rest of the season until a calf injury kept him from playing against the Heat in Miami on Sunday.

Mudiay was finally given legitimate playing time for the first time in nearly two months within a Nuggets offense that has been revolutionized into a ball movement-oriented and spacious scoring machine and Nuggets fans finally got to see what Mudiay looks like with a system that fits his strengths.

Mudiay proceeded to put up 17 points on 4-9 shooting to go along with four rebounds and nine assists against just two turnovers. He was getting to the rim with ease, dumping passes to bigs after the defense collapsed on him, and playing in the high pick-and-roll within an offense that finally gave him a wide open painted area to maneuver through.

Mudiay was finally playing confident basketball and it showed. His scoring and swagger had returned as evident by this hesitation move that nearly put Hassan Whiteside on the floor.

This was the scoring Denver had hoped to see from Mudiay. He uses his quickness to lose Goran Dragic on a screen from Jokic and proceeds to use a lethal hesitation move that discombobulates Whiteside so much he cannot even recover to contest a wide open reverse lay-up that Mudiay gets with ease.

Mudiay was not just scoring getting to the rim in the half court but also leaking out the way that Gary Harris does. Mudiay leaks out the second Murray gets a big block and finishes the play by showing off his vertical athletic ability by hanging in the air and finishing a tough one-handed floater in transition.

Mudiay’s scoring on full display but his vision and passing ability are what shined the brightest.

The high-velocity passes and elite vision that got Mudiay drafted so high had finally returned. The extra space on the floor did wonders for him as he was finally able to theses types of lightning quick passes.

Look at how there is just one person in the paint when Mudiay throws this pass to Faried. This spacing was non-existent for the entirety of Mudiay’s time as a member of the Nuggets. That space allows Mudiay to fire a bullet right past James Johnson’s ear to Faried for a layup.

The same thinking is applied to Mudiay when playing within the pick and roll. Look at how far up Willie Reed has to play on Plumlee. That is directly connected to the style of basketball that Denver has adopted. With both Plumlee and Jokic operating from the high post more often than not it sucks the defense out of the paint and gives Plumlee all of that room to catch the pass from Mudiay.

Mudiay would never have the room to collapse the defense and make an easy pass out of the pick and roll like this. He normally was trying to force passes into spaces that did not exist being that the paint was always occupied.

As the game went on Mudiay’s confidence continued to grow by the time the third quarter had rolled around he was showing off the creativity that has been lacking this season. Some of the passes he was making were unbelievably difficult and imaginative like this feed to Gallinari.

The paint is, again, almost completely vacant. Mudiay takes advantage by drives to the outside shoulder of Whiteside, effectively drawing him to contest what seems to be a shot from Mudiay but instead has the ball squeak between him and Tyler Johnson to Gallinari for the easy jump shot.

Mudiay’s confidence grew so much that he was driving past the entire Miami defense and attracting so much attention that he was able to set up Faried for this wide open dunk.

The Nuggets finally played Mudiay in a system that highlights his strength and it was a beautiful sight. With Nelson still hurting Mudiay should get more opportunities to prove himself. If he can string together a few games of this caliber the rest of the season he will make the Nuggets point guard logjam even more complicated than it already is.

Mudiay struggled in ways that he has struggled his entire career. He missed a couple layups at the rim and still resorted back to his double-clutch fading jumper too often and looked lost off-ball on defense but he looked like he belonged offensively for the first time in quite a while. Mudiay reminded everyone that there is still a role for him in Denver.