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Why Do Good College Players Go Undrafted in the NBA?

Why do good college players go undrafted in the NBA? Mo Evans, a 22.6-point scorer who went unpicked in 2001, explains what NBA scouts saw and what came next.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · January 12, 2019

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Maurice Evans cried on draft night in 2001. He says so without any hedging: "I definitely shed tears on draft night."

He had worked out for seven teams. His first workout was alongside Jason Richardson and Shane Battier, who went fifth and sixth in that draft. Evans' name was never called.

So why do good college players go undrafted in the NBA? Usually because teams are paying for a ceiling, not a scoring average. They also discount stats built at a smaller program or on a losing team. In 2001 that logic ran at full volume, and Evans fell straight through it.

He told the story on Tales From the Association, in the episode "Season 2: Mo Evans," hosted by Chris Horwedel. If you listen to one stretch, make it the Flip Saunders elevator story.

Did the 2001 NBA draft prefer potential over production?

Chris put it to him directly. The draft sat in the middle of the "we love high school players, we love international players" era, he said, and potential seemed to count for much more than production.

The results back him up. The draft took place on June 27, 2001, in New York, and Kwame Brown became the first high school player taken first overall. Tyson Chandler went second, Pau Gasol third and Eddy Curry fourth. Chandler and Curry came straight out of high school. Gasol came from Spain. Vladimir Radmanovic, from Yugoslavia, went twelfth.

Evans' answer was short. "I had both," he said. "I had potential, I had production." Then he did something unusual for a man with a grievance. He gave the other side some credit.

The high school jumpers and one-and-done players of that period, he said, had basketball IQs "light years ahead" of his. He was, in his words, playing off raw talent. The better version of him, the one who later ran pick and roll in Italy, hadn't shown up yet.

The draft's own record is a decent argument for caution about ceilings. Eight players selected in that draft never played in an NBA game.

Why do good college players go undrafted in the NBA? What scouts saw in Evans

The numbers were loud. Evans' sophomore year at Wichita State is the one Chris kept returning to. He led the Missouri Valley Conference and ranked ninth in Division I in scoring at 22.6 points a game, and he shot 42.1% from three-point range (69-of-164). Chris' read was that a stat line like that today would belong to a high pick.

Then he transferred. At Texas as a junior he started all 34 games and led the team in scoring at 15.6 a game. He earned third-team All-Big 12 honors from the coaches. Texas lists him as an early-entry candidate who gave up his senior season.

The scouting reports tell a different story. One profile of him said he was "easily one of the top 5" athletes in the draft. The same report warned that his perimeter shot was streaky and that he sometimes played too passively. DraftExpress was blunter, saying his ball-handling and perimeter shooting weren't up to par with the rest of his game.

Evans has his own list of reasons, and two of them are about exposure and advice. Wichita State was a mid-major in an age before ESPNU and ESPN3 carried everyone's games, and he calls his program "underexposed." And as a 19-year-old he had nobody close to him who had been through the process. He says he would have gone back to Texas for a senior year alongside T.J. Ford had he known where he stood.

Nobody has a signed pre-draft board proving he was a top-15 pick. That figure is Evans' account, and his memory of seven workouts between picks 15 and 25 fits it. The scouting notes suggest a real gap between his athletic ceiling and his skills. Both things can be true. A player can be productive, and a scout can still be unsure what that production turns into against grown men.

What happens when an undrafted player signs a non-guaranteed deal?

Evans signed with Minnesota two days after the draft. The Timberwolves had forfeited their 2001 first-round pick over salary cap violations, so he arrived as a depth signing on a veteran team built around Kevin Garnett. He says he was signed "for insurance purposes."

The contract was a "1 and 1," he told Chris, not the fully guaranteed two-year deal he now thinks he should have held out for. That meant he had little leverage. He played in only 10 games. Chris counted about 45 minutes in total, most of it garbage time.

“I was projected to be a top 15 pick on all NBA draft boards only to go undrafted.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Tales From the Association

"It made me realize just how much of a pawn I was," Evans said. He learned how replaceable a bench player is. He also learned that nobody on that team had the time to explain it to him.

There is a small, funny scene from that year. Evans said hello to Flip Saunders in a Minnesota elevator and got silence. Garnett stepped on a few floors later, Saunders greeted him, and Garnett ignored the coach. "This is what the NBA is like," Evans remembers thinking. He compared it to Kansas, which it was not.

Garnett, though, did let him stay at his house that summer so they could work out together.

Can an NBA team cut you after a great preseason?

Yes, and Minnesota did it to him. Evans went into the next training camp in the best shape of his life. The night before the cut, he says, he scored 15 points in Philadelphia.

The Wolves told him they liked him and that he'd had a great camp. They said they were going with older players for a veteran team. DraftExpress notes he was waived right before the 2002-03 season, after already making the team through summer league.

They offered him two more preseason games to showcase himself for other teams. He said no. "My pride at the time," he said, was telling him he was done. His agent told him to take 24 hours and clear his head. Once he cleared waivers, he was on a flight to Greece.

Evans described the contrast. In Minnesota he had a locker a few spaces from Garnett. In Greece the locker room had no lockers, only a hook with his number on a strip of tape. Chris reminded him that it was still one of the better situations in Europe, and that other players had it much worse.

How did Mo Evans rebuild his career in Europe?

He rebuilt it in two countries. He joined Olympiacos in Greece in 2002, then played for Benetton Basket Treviso in Italy in 2003-04, winning the Italian Cup. The EuroLeague's own player profile confirms the 2004 Italian Cup win.

Italy was the bigger culture shock. Evans had taken foreign languages every year since sixth grade, so Greek didn't throw him. He could go to movies in English with Greek subtitles. In Treviso, nobody spoke much English and the films were all dubbed in Italian. He got his Italian visa through a trip to the consulate in Houston. He said it felt like a scene from Eat, Pray, Love, and Chris noted it was the first time that movie had come up on the show.

The basketball was the point. Evans credits coach Ettore Messina with the best season of his career. Messina let him run pick and roll and play the post. In the NBA he'd been told to stand in the corner while Mike Bibby or Chauncey Billups ran the offense. In Europe, he said, the practices were skill-heavy: two sessions a day, with the first built around shooting.

Evans says he was named Player of the Year for Europe that season, and says he also won a mid-season championship. I couldn't find an official trophy list confirming the award, so treat the title as his account. Still, the work is documented. The Italian Cup is confirmed, and Treviso's playoff games included a 36-point night against Bologna on May 25, 2004.

The NBA still wasn't calling. He says a Moscow contract fell apart when payments were missed, and then he was told to return money he hadn't earned. Sacramento invited him to camp with 22 players for 15 guaranteed spots. He says he outplayed three signed veterans, who were cut. In 2004 he made the Kings roster and became a rotation player, starting 11 of 65 games at 19 minutes and 6.4 points a game.

Does this still happen to college players today?

Evans thinks the problem has flipped. Teams now fall for one big freshman year, he argued, and a small sample doesn't always travel. He said players who stay three or four years arrive more ready to contribute.

Chris offered Luka Dončić, who had played professionally for years and was, in his view, by far the best rookie of that class. Evans agreed. He praised Dončić's poise and his pick-and-roll feel, which is what Evans had been told to keep in the corner. They are the kind of skills that European coaches drill.

Evans has turned the whole thing into a business. He mentors players, including Nick Stauskas, and he built a company around giving athletes real-time advice so they don't learn contract lessons the way he did.

The scoreboard is the funniest part. Chris introduced him as a man who played "nearly 11,000 minutes in the NBA." Eight of the players the league did draft in 2001 never logged one.