While UA has faced some head-scratching decisions by players to leave early despite not getting drafted in the first round – or at all, as Brandon Ashley wasn’t picked in 2015 as a junior – Irvine dealt with it last spring.
UC Irvine coach Turner said he advised Mamadou N’diaye to come back. Instead, the Senegalese big man left and wasn’t picked. He was signed by Detroit, but later waived by both the Pistons and their D-League affiliate in Grand Rapids.
“My advice to him was he should have stayed and graduated,” Turner said. “But he was in a mindset where he wanted to try to figure it out as a professional, and there’s no way to fault that. I totally support that. Big men only have a limited window to try it. But it hasn’t worked out as he had hoped. He’s going to have to come back in a different way.”
Part of N’diaye’s problem is that the NBA doesn’t value size alone as much in the modern game.
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“The NBA game has gotten incredibly smaller,” Turner said. “That’s made it difficult for Mamadou because they want big men who can space the floor. Maybe Mamadou will be a better prospect in Europe, where the game is a little more like college basketball.”
