Emmanuel Mudiay entered the NBA with a lot of hype in 2015, but his career didn't pan out the way everyone imagined. Mudiay hasn't played in the NBA for years now and shared during an appearance on the Tuf Buckets podcast how the politics in the league killed his love for basketball.
"The politics of it kinda just like [affected me]," Mudiay said. "Basketball's always been my baby, bro. I love basketball, but the stuff that I couldn't control was what was eating me up inside for a while. Honestly, when COVID happened ... I was like, 'Man, I don't have to deal with what I'm dealing with.'"
Mudiay was frustrated by how the NBA teams he was on kept giving opportunities to players on bigger contracts, even if he outplayed them.
"They always going to go with the person that they invest in money-wise until that person figures it out," Mudiay stated. "Or if they don't, we're still rolling with them. So it's like that part was the hard pill to swallow with the basketball because I felt like you're not treating basketball like basketball.
"It's the business part of it that you're [focusing on] and I couldn't separate the two," Mudiay continued. "That was my biggest problem too, and I wasn't quiet about it. I'm like, 'Yo, I'm busting this dude.'"
The Denver Nuggets selected Mudiay with the seventh pick of the 2015 NBA Draft after he spent a year playing in China. He had opted against going to college after impressing at Prime Prep Academy, but struggled with injuries during his time with the Guangdong Southern Tigers.
That didn't deter the Nuggets, but the partnership didn't work out. Mudiay believes he and then-head coach Michael Malone weren't a great fit at the time. He thinks he wasn't mature enough to handle that style of coaching and reckons Malone might not have understood him either.
Mudiay was a starter for his first two seasons in the NBA, but then lost his spot to Jamal Murray in the 2017-18 season. The Nuggets would cut ties soon after, trading him to the New York Knicks in 2018 in a three-team deal that also involved the Dallas Mavericks.
Mudiay enjoyed a mini-revival of sorts in his first full season with the Knicks, but he wouldn't be in the NBA for much longer. He spent the 2019-20 season with the Utah Jazz and then headed overseas to play in Lithuania. He returned to the U.S. and had a brief stint with the Sacramento Kings in 2021, but has been out of the NBA since.
In his six seasons in the league, Mudiay averaged 10.9 points, 2.9 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.3 blocks per game. The 29-year-old is currently playing for Piratas de Quebradillas in Puerto Rico and was named MVP for the 2025 season.
Mudiay is in a better place mentally now and credits podcast host Antonio Singleton for helping him rediscover his love for basketball. He stated that Lifetime Basketball and Church Basketball brought him peace. Mudiay started to love the game again and is thriving on the court as a result.
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