Get to Know: Malcolm Brogdon
We are almost seven months removed from the 2016 NBA Draft, and while it is exceptionally early to be making any long-term judgments on the quality of the Class of 2016, the early results have been rather mixed. Not a single player taken in the 2016 NBA Draft is averaging double-digits in their rookie season, and the run-away favorite for the NBA Rookie of the Year Award is a man who was actually drafted in 2014 (Joel Embiid).
That being said, there have been a few pleasant surprises. Mindaugas Kuzminskas is already a cult hero in Madison Square Garden, Buddy Hield is shooting over 48 percent from three since the start of December, and Jaylen Brown is bringing back the short shorts revolution.
Probably the most pleasant surprise, however, has been Malcolm Brogdon.
Malcolm Moses Brogdon was born December 11, 1992 in Atlanta, Georgia to Jann Adams and Mitchell Brogdon. Adams holds her Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is the assistant provost for faculty at Morehouse University, while Mitchell Brogdon is a lawyer and mediator.
Unlike some other players in the NBA who come from a long line of athletic families, Brogdon comes from a long line of academic standouts. In addition to his professorial mother, both his older brothers went into law; he has one aunt who went to Wharton and another who went to Harvard; and he has a grandmother who had her doctorate in education.
It is not surprising then to hear that Brogdon and his brothers had to maintain at least a B average if they wanted to play sports when growing up in Jann Adams household. What is more surprising is that basketball wasn’t even Brogdon’s first love. Brogdon was more of a soccer player until high school when he faced a decision to put an emphasis on one or the other, and he decided to go with basketball.
Brogdon was no slouch on the soccer field, however, as he gained his sporting competitive edge on the soccer field, once scoring 12 goals in a game, only to have his father to him to keep scoring. It was from his father that Brogdon got his killer instincts.
After his decision to go with hoops over footy, Brogdon bounced around a few schools before settling on Greater Atlanta Christian School for his junior and senior years of high school. While Brogdon certainly made his impact felt on the court (25.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game as a senior), he wasn’t a McDonald’s All-American, or even a five-star recruit. As his high school career wound down, Brogdon was receiving offers was several Division I schools, but none of the Big Boys a la Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina. Before making his final decision, Brogdon narrowed the list down to six schools: Clemson, Harvard, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt and Virginia. For his family, who, remember, had plenty of Ivy league ties, it was shocking that there was even a decision to be made — if he could get into Harvard, why would he go anywhere else?
But Brogdon had other ideas, and landed on the University of Virginia, where head coach Tony Bennett was in his second season of remaking the storied program. Bennett and Brogdon had clicked during a previous Summer Camp, and Brogdon felt most comfortable becoming a Cavalier.
In his freshman season at the University of Virginia, Brogdon was anything but an immediate star. The 6’ 5” combo guard averaged 6.7 points in 22.4 minutes a game and broke his foot late in the season. The injury was severe enough that he had to redshirt his sophomore season. This injury is one that Brogdon has said was key in his growth as an intellectual basketball player, however, as his year on the sideline helped him to see the game from a different perspective.
When Brogdon came back for his redshirt sophomore year, his numbers made an impressive jump, averaging 12.7 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 2.7 assists in 31.4 minutes per game. He also began to solidify his stellar defensive reputation. As such, he was named All-ACC first team by the coaches, and All-ACC second team by the media, and he was beginning to draw attention in the basketball world.
His junior year did nothing to assuage the attention he was beginning to draw, as his list of plaudits from his junior year alone are vast enough to cover an entire page. Most impressively, Brogdon was named second-team All-America and won the WINA Award for Outstanding Male Athlete in Virginia.
At this point, Brogdon was a projected second round pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, an opportunity at which many would jump, but Brogdon had other plans — he wanted to get his masters. Just a year away from completing his masters in public policy (he had already earned a degree in history), Malcolm Brogdon decided to forego the NBA Draft and return for a fifth and final year in Charlottesville, Virginia. The decision may have surprised many, but for those who knew Brogdon, it was hardly a surprise. Brogdon told Sports Illustrated’s David Gardner, “In my family, graduating and getting your bachelor’s is just the beginning. It’s only expected. You’re underachieving if you don’t strive for more than that.”
And so Brogdon returned for one more year. While Brogdon and company were unable to lead Virginia to the Promised Land of a National Title, Brogdon far from disappointed, becoming a unanimous consensus first-team All-American and becoming the first player ever to win both ACC Player of the Year and ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Remember, this is the same ACC where Michael Jordan plied his trade in his college days.
With this killer senior season, Brogdon only saw his stock rise heading into the 2016 NBA Draft. Brogdon impressed in the interviews leading up to the draft, as well. According to Bleacher Report, one NBA personnel said Brogdon was the best interview he’d had in 14 years in the business. Another scout said Brogdon was the player that everybody wants their daughter to date. As far as his bona fides as a man, Brogdon passed with flying colors.
However, because Brogdon lacked some of the obvious explosive athleticism of his peers, and because of his relatively high age come draft time (23 years old), Brogdon slipped to the Milwaukee Bucks with the sixth pick of the second round (36th overall).
Right now, the 21 teams that passed on Brogdon (including the Boston Celtics, who passed on him five times) on draft night may well be ruing their decision. Brogdon is averaging 9.3 points per game, best among rookies from the 2016 NBA Draft class. He’s adding 3.9 assists each night, tops among every eligible rookie this season. Brogdon is shooting an efficient 45.6 percent from the field, including 43.5 percent from three-point land. Take a guess where that three-point percentage ranks among rookies? You guessed it, first. Not only is that 43.5 percent from three best among all rookies, it’s miles ahead of David Bertans in second place at 39.1 percent. Also of note, Bertans is playing less than ten minutes a game for San Antonio and is even older than Brogdon.
Brogdon has played in all 40 games for the Bucks this season, and he has taken a spot in the starting lineup in the past ten games. In those ten starts, Brogdon is averaging 13.5 points, 4.3 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game, while turning the ball over less than twice a game. His positional flexibility allows the Bucks to slot him anywhere on the court, and his basketball smarts have smoothed the transition to the NBA better than anyone could have imagined.
We haven’t even gotten to Brogdon’s off-court input for the Bucks. This is a man whose three nicknames on his NBA-Reference page are: “Humble Moses,” “The President” and “Uncle Malcolm.” How on earth did this gem of a human slip to the 36th overall pick in last year’s draft?!
Right now it appears as though Brogdon is likely to have a long and fruitful NBA career, one in which he provides the same type of stability and production that he did in his five years at the University of Virginia. With the Bucks a definitive team on the rise in the Eastern Conference (thanks in large part to the emergence of real-life Monstar, Giannis Antetokounmpo), Brogdon may even become an NBA champion one day.
Of course, if by any chance Brogdon’s NBA career does go off the rails — or maybe instead just at the end of a long, successful career — we probably won’t be done hearing Brogdon’s name. The man with the masters in public policy has already gone on record as saying his long-term goal for the future is supplying third world countries with clean water and food.
While many in the NBA world are quickly learning the name of Malcolm Moses Brogdon, it may not be long before many in actual world know the name of this impressive man.
