Change of plans should benefit Malik Newman big time

What started as a sure-fire one-and-done college career will now likely extend to at least three seasons.

And that might wind up being an absolute blessing for the young man involved.

Malik Newman, the former McDonald’s All-American who played his freshman season at Mississippi State, is transferring to Kansas after leaving the Bulldogs following his lone season in Starkville, Miss.

The narrative on Newman the minute he committed to MSU was that he was a one-and-done player, a likely lottery pick, who would not be at Mississippi State past the 2015-16 season. As it turns out, those claims were right but not for the reason many believed.

Now, after announcing his decision to come to Kansas on Friday, Newman will sit out the 2016-17 season, during which he will practice with the Jayhawks and learn Bill Self’s system, before becoming eligible again in 2017-18. At that point, he’ll be a third-year sophomore, approaching 21 years old and headed down a much different path than he and others ever thought he would take.

Given the wild success enjoyed by so many seniors and upperclassmen during the 2015-16 college basketball season, Newman should thank his lucky stars for this unpredictable, unintentional road block.

This spring, Newman was invited to the NBA Combine and still considered to be a possible late first or second round pick. As the combine went on and Newman’s status as a potential first-rounder slipped all the way to a late second round status on most mock drafts, the 6-foot-3 combo guard elected to withdraw from the draft and seek a transfer.

Sure, landing in the first round and getting guaranteed money and a jumpstart on an NBA career would have been nice, but I’m willing to bet that one day, who knows how long from now, Newman will greatly appreciate that he was forced to audible because doing so will give him the best chance to (a) develop as a basketball player and (b) become truly ready for a long NBA career.

That’s because he’ll now spend two years learning under Self, a man who knows a thing or two about developing talent and putting players in the NBA, and two years practicing against top-tier talent and playing against it on KU’s always-treacherous non-conference and Big 12 schedule.

Think about the athletes Newman will battle with just in the coming year — Frank Mason, Devonte’ Graham and Josh Jackson every day in practice. And he’ll do so without Self having to worry about working him into the regular rotation, meaning that Newman will not only be able to improve his own game but he also exclusively will be able to push those guys to their limit day in and day out. Talk about a win-win for both the player and the program.

After that, who knows what kind of talented athletes will be in the Big 12, but think Jawun Evans at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma’s Christian James, Texas’ Kerwin Roach or Eric Davis Jr., and whatever other talented players the top-tier coaches can bring in by then.

As we’ve seen plenty of times — especially recently — just because a player was a McDonald’s All-American or wildly hyped/highly rated coming out of high school does not mean he’ll be a star at the college level. But Newman, after getting a taste at MSU — and averaging 11.3 points per game last season — and a red-shirt year at Kansas, should be poised to deliver all people were expecting and then some by the time he finally is eligible again.

It’s worth pointing out that Newman could red-shirt the upcoming season and then elect to enter the 2017 NBA draft before ever playing at Kansas. But the guess here is that after putting in the kind of work he surely will during his off season, the guy will want to get the reward of actually playing for the Jayhawks and inside Allen Fieldhouse for a season before moving on.

Newman’s college career may not play out the way anybody expected it to when he arrived at Mississippi State. But, when it’s all said and done, I doubt you’ll ever hear an ounce of complaining about it from him.


For more discussion about KU’s latest pick up, check out our latest Spodcasters episode.