The guys over at Believe the Hype caught up with Emmanuel Mudiay in Vegas as he works with the USA Men’s Basketball Select Team. Mudiay had some interesting comments, including his views on his rivalry with D’Angelo Russell
I mean, it’s fun. You kind of got to see that in the first year how we went at it, which was fun. We both had that chip on our shoulder that we wanted to prove who’s what. In high school, I was ‘this and that’, I went out of the country, he stayed and made some noise and became one of the household names over at Ohio State. We got drafted… But I think the main thing is everyone in our class, you can just tell, it should make us proud that everybody’s here. Just because we put in so much work and we came of the same class.
While rivalries oftentimes take place after years of fierce competition between top flight competitors, Mudiay and Russell’s seems to be a lot more about where they were drafted and the fact that they play the same position. It certainly seems though that Mudiay at least views it as a legitimate rivalry. Check out the rest of the article, including some comments about playing for the select team and what its like playing for coach Michael Malone.
