CHICAGO — Malik Newman will pull out of the NBA Draft and return to Mississippi State for his sophomore season if his father is not satisfied with his projected draft status.
Once projected as high as the No. 4 pick by DraftExpress.com, the 6-foot-3 1/2 Newman is currently slotted at No. 52. He has not hired an agent and has until May 25 to decide about returning to campus.
“Right now everyone is projecting him a second round pick and, to be quite honest with you, I don’t know if we’re going to take the chance on being a second-round pick,” Horatio Webster, Newman’s father and a former Mississippi State star, told SNY.tv by phone on Thursday. “Being that he’s just a freshman, if he don’t get a promise or something that’s concrete, then we’re not going to take the chance on being a second-round pick. He would pull his name out by the 25th.”
Newman famously chose Mississippi State over Kentucky and Kansas and then did not live up to the hype due to series of nagging injuries including turf toe and a back injury.
In his lone season on campus, the preseason All-SEC Second Team honoree averaged 11.3 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.2 assists and the Bulldogs failed to make the NCAA Tournament.
“I just think it was the injuries,” Newman told me last week at the NBA Draft Combine. “I mean nagging injury after nagging injury. I never could get 100 percent during the season. That’s really the only thing I can think of.”
At the Combine, he averaged 6.5 points and 1.0 assist in two games.
“I don’t think he did enough to be a first-round [pick] but if it’s a good situation in the second round then we would entertain it,” Webster said. “If not then he will go back to school.”
ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla thinks coming back for a sophomore year would be a good idea.
“Injuries slowed Malik down this year,” he told SNY.tv. “He had a couple of moments of brilliance at the Combine but I think it’s best to put together a solid sophomore season.”
Newman worked out with the Bulls while in Chicago and has upcoming workouts with Milwaukee (Friday), the Nets (May 22) and the Knicks (24). The Nets own the No. 55 pick and are trying to add a late-first or early-second round pick, while the Knicks don’t own a pick and are trying to do the same.
“I haven’t really been asking what’s my range or where I might go but I’ve been getting some quality feedback,” Newman said.
The failures of both Newman and Ben Simmons (a projected top-2 pick) to make the NCAA Tournament has fueled a belief by some that future McDonald’s All-American-type players will choose bluebloods like Kentucky, Kansas and Duke over places like Mississippi State and LSU.
But Newman isn’t buying it.
“Of course not because everything that I went through at Mississippi State made me the person that I am right now today,” Newman said. “And so who says that I go to Kentucky or even [Simmons] goes to Kentucky and our seasons still don’t turn out the same? So I mean just because it was a thing of it’s Kentucky and Kentucky is a blueblood school…I feel like a school is a school and it’s up to the team to prove how far that team goes.”
Despite his perceiving declining stock, Newman says he has nothing to prove.
“I feel like the only thing I have to prove is that nothing has changed about Malik Newman,” he said. “I feel like I’m healthy right now, I’m 100 percent and it’s just all about going there showing that I can play with these elite guys and I am an elite guy.”
If Newman returns to campus, he could showcase himself in 2016-17 and try to help his stock for the 2017 Draft.
Still, Webster said he wasn’t sure his son was used properly under coach Ben Howland.
“I don’t know if he was used the right way, either,” Webster said. “Fifty percent of the time he was just sitting in the corner, which I think Ben is a phenomenal coach. Ben did whatever he could to make your team win so I’m not knocking him for that but I just think Malik is really good with the ball in his hand and he didn’t get a chance to show that part of his game, either.”
Asked if he was considering transferring, Webster said of Newman, “No.”
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