It's up to Vlade to get the damned info, not to passively accept what is readily available. It may be *hard* to get the info, but that doesn't preclude him from getting it. This is the damned professional basketball association. The Kings have a multi-million dollar budget in order to scout players. You get the info by hook or crook - beg, borrow, steal. I don't care how you get it. You get it! You buy info from a scout, you hire a scout who has scouted him, you talk to Larry Brown and get all the contacts and info he has on the guy, you just do it. No matter how hard it is. This is a consensus top 10 pick in the NBA who you don't know about him before the draft begins? Does anybody sincerely think that SA and the Lakers and Miami don't have info on Mudiay? Seriously, what do you think the response would be from Pop when he asks his head scout: What can you tell me about Mudiay. Answer: I don't know about him. Good luck to that career (and maybe his lifespan). I guess people this board don't know much about doing research. I've had 30 years of experience in research, finding stuff out, and there is no question in my mind that with an ordinary NBA budget I could *know* about Mudiay. So why couldn't the Kings? Because it's just too hard?
Let me see if I can't help you here. If you were to go around the league and talk to scouts and GM's, and ask them about Mudiay, most of them would tell you he's the mystery man in the draft. I did everything I could to find video of him and the best I came up with, and I'm sure NBA teams have better access, was two complete games, one was the championship game where I think he played around 24 or 25 minutes, and the other game he played a whooping 12 minutes. He played in a total of 12 games overall. I also saw one of his highschool games, and then of course the usual youtube crap. By comparison, I saw every game that Willie Cauley-Stein played for the last two years, around 64 games. I also saw around 20 of his freshman year games. So in total I saw him play around 80 or so times. He played in a big, pressure packed program against the best college players, and along side some of the best college players. As a result, I think I have a pretty good handle on what Stein can, and can't do. At least at the college level, and I feel very certain that his skills will translate to the NBA.
By the same token, I saw almost every game that Winslow and Okafor played this year, and I could say the same thing about a lot of the current players in the draft. The info I was able to obtain about Mudiay, is extremely small when compared to other players. My point is, there just isn't a lot to go on with Mudiay, other than he came out of highschool with a lot of potential. So personally, if I have to choose between a player that I know inside and out, and like, and a player that I've only see play a few times, and he won't even come in for an interview, much less a workout, guess who I'm going to choose. It's not a matter of not making an effort to get the info, its that there really wasn't much to go on. What I did see of Mudiay, I liked, but he didn't blow me away like Russell did. I didn't have any wow moments with Mudiay. Doesn't mean he won't turn into the next greatest PG in the NBA. But I came away with a lot of questions, none to be answered.