Dante Exum (1.96, 97 kilos), who will play for Barcelona, could have been an NBA star. In fact, he seemed called to be, and it can be argued that, at 26, everything is still possible. But that train, that of stardom in the United States, left for an Exum that can, however, aspire to return to the NBA and do another career stretch there. One more fortunate. October 16 was chopped up by Houston Rockets, the official end (for now) of his career in the big league, where he came as a wonderful mystery … and very precious. He was No. 5 in the 2014 draft. He was picked by the Jazz, who had just won 25 games and needed some good news. What they believed they drafted with Exum is what, in terms of enthusiasm and competitive leadership, they chose three years later with Donovan Mitchell. In 2014, Quin Snyder was going to make his debut on the bench and in that first team of Exum there was a block that did not get to be what was expected (Gordon Hayward, Alec Burks, Derrick Favorts) and the embryo (Rudy Gobert, Joe Ingles) of the that was to come. And in which Exum did not fit either.
Much of the blame was for the injuries. After a rookie year in which he noticed the fledgling in a thunderous way (debuted in the NBA with 19 years and 108 days) missed his full second year with a cruciate ligament injury suffered in the summer of 2015 with Australia. Then, in the following years, only flashes. For instance, his defense of James Harden in the 2018 playoffs, when he broke in after Ricky Rubio’s muscle injury (4-1 for the Rockets in the Western semifinals). Flashes peppered with more problems: shoulder, ankles, again a knee, finally a muscle injury ugly that left him in just six games last season. In total, 245 in the NBA. 215 with the Jazz, 30 with the Cavaliers. And averages of 5.7 points and 2.1 assists. In the summer of 2018, after that promising peak in the playoffs, the Jazz bet on him (about $ 30 million for three years). In December 2019, he was traded to the Cavs in the operation that sent the Jazz to Jordan Clarkson (current Best Sixth Man). In January 2021, the Cavs sneaked into the Operation James Harden to take Jarrett Allen. Exum ended, in that trance of mega operation of four teams, at the Houston Rockets, where he arrived injured and where he left without making his debut.
The start of a new path
Is it the end of the NBA for Exum? No one can know. It is, yes, the end of a stage that was not what it should have been and that it could have had a last chapter, it ended up not being like that, thanks to its good performance in the Tokyo Olympics. From there he came out with a bronze medal and excellent sensations. With confidence, speed and explosiveness, he scored 14 points in the semi-finals against the United States and most of all, dynamited Slovenia in the bronze match. As a squire to Patty Mills, appeared like a tornado in the partial 20-8 that decided the last medal. He scored or assisted in 13 of those 20 points for his team: a dunk, a pair of triples and an excellent defense, supported by Matisse Thybulle (the octopus of the Sixers) to embitter an exhausted Luka Doncic.
But the new NBA opportunity did not come for a player who wrote his exotic legend predraft in distant summers with the lower categories of Australia: in the 2012 U-17 World Cup, in Lithuania, averaged 17.7 points, led his team to the final and entered the Best Quintet alongside Justise Winslow, Jahlil Okafor, Mario Hezonja and Gabriel Deck. A year later, in the Prague Under-19s, he started slowly due to ankle problems and ended like a hurricane at the crossroads: he scored 33 points in the quarterfinals to the impotent Spain of Willy Hernangómez, Alberto Díaz and Darío Brizuela and later added, in two final losses, 21 points against Serbia and 28 with 5 assists against Lithuania. Australia finished fourth and Exum entered the Best Quintet again, this time with Aaron Gordon, Jahlil Okafor, Dario Saric and Vasilije Micic.
At the first of these tournaments, a clear turning point in his path, Rich Sheubrooks liked him very much, who worked for the Jazz and organized the Nike Hoops Summit, the meeting in Portland that brought together American high school stars with the best young people from the rest of the planet. There the NBA scouts were piling up and there were Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, Julius Randle, Jabari Parker … Exum arrived a year younger than all because Sheubrooks met him at the airport after that World Cup in Lithuania and invited him personally. In training for the world team, he insisted on defending Andrew Wiggins, the Canadian who was aiming for a generational star (he has not been). In the game he scored 17 points and left traces of what he already had and, above all, of what could be: Tremendous elasticity and wingspan to play base, lightning first step, enormous ability to penetrate, defensive instinct, physical motor and IQ…
That party of young princes, and the appearances with Australia, they released it as safe lottery pick (top 14) and possible top 5 of the 2014 draft. He was eligible to run because he was turning 19 (July 13) in the calendar year of the draft, the requirement for non-US players. He preferred to play in College, do at least one year of college. He was raffled off by North Carolina, Indiana and a Kentucky that even proposed to him to sign in the winter of 2014, in the middle of the season and just after finishing his high school stage in Australia. There he had quit Australian football, his other passion, because “he couldn’t shoot.” That problem was not in basketball.
From the Sixers’ option to the Utah Jazz
Instead of in a university and in ultra media duels of March Madness, Exum spent the months leading up to the draft stuck in a sports hall in Anaheim, near Disneyland and where Kobe Bryant also trained, to which he turned for advice. He was trained tirelessly by Rob McClanaghan, a coach who had worked with Stephen Curry, Kevin Love, Kevin Durant or Derrick Rose. Exum preferred the university, but the projections fired left him without option. Everyone around him wanted to see him in the NBA as soon as possible and the franchises were not sure what to do with that mysterious little boy full of potential and with a jungle physique. Cavaliers and Bucks, it was an open secret, they were going to give 1 and 2 to Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker. Exum, from there, was a very feasible option at No. 3, owned by a Sixers trained by Brett Brown, the Maine manager with huge ties to Australia. Finally the Sixers chose Joel Embiid, the Magic Aaron Gordon and the Jazz, in the 5, Exum.
Exum did not develop a remarkable outside shot, although he did progress. His ability to mature as a director was called into question by the lack of continuity, but his physique to play penetration and his ability to be disruptive in defense are values that go with him from the start, at pack inicial… as long as the physique does not fail again. He is still 26 years old and has many dreams to fulfill after a tough NBA stage that did not erase the bad taste in his mouth that the League had also left his father, an American who ended up playing in Australia after being drafted by the Nuggets in 1984. Cecil Exum was chosen with the 194 pick, in round 9. A long way from the 3 that Michael Jordan had taken, with whom he had played in the North Carolina Tar Heels that were champions in 1982, with James Worthy as the big star.
His father, in fact, found him a campus in the United States where he can lick his wounds when he was cut by his high school team at age 15. Since the West Coast was 15 hours away and the West 20, he ended up at UCLA, near where he retired three years later, in Anaheim, to gain pounds of muscle and NBA efficiency before a draft that, perhaps, came too early. The same was that, the same were the injuries, the same was a bit of everything. But the fact is that Exum did not explode in an NBA from which he now leaves for Barcelona and the objective of finding himself as a player. Sometimes, many times, it is a matter of taking a step back and then taking steps, many steps, forward.
