We had overused the basketball witticism, “He can jump out of the gym” to the point that it had lost all meaning.
Then Kaodirichi Akobundu-Ehiogu materialized before us, as if from thin air, on the Dallas Mavericks Summer League team, to remind us what jumping out of the gym really looks like.
You can’t overthrow this guy on a lob. Believe me, Sergio de Larrea and Vsevolod Ishchenko have tried on several occasions over the course of the four games Akobundu-Ehiogu has played with the Summer Mavs.
His
standing vertical is said to be better than 41 inches, and his maximum vertical has been measured at 48 inches. Already standing 6’10”, that makes him one of the highest flyers the basketball-watching audience has ever seen.
“My mom was 5’8” and my dad was short,“ Akobundu-Ehiogu said in a video for something called Whistle Sports back in 2022. ”It doesn’t make any sense.“
Dallas has been a big part of his sidewinding journey in and out of the game of basketball, and not just because he’s become a Summer League sideshow this year while wearing a Mavericks uniform. He was born in Imo, Nigeria, near Lagos, where he spent his early childhood, before his parents both passed within the span of 11 months, according to a report from WATN-TV.
Akobundu-Ehiogu was just six years old at the time. An aunt who was living in Mesquite brought him and his siblings over to live with her and began the years-long process of officially adopting them.
He didn’t start playing basketball until less than three weeks before tryouts for the seventh-grade team. He was just 5’4” at the time, but would grow more than 14 inches over the next five years, until he stood 6’6” entering his senior year of high school at Mesquite Poteet.
His only offer after high school was to play for a tiny private Christian school just south of Dallas in Waxahachie. It was then called Southwestern Assembly of God University (SAGU), but it now called Nelson University. He played for one season there before telling his coach he wouldn’t return for a second year, because his dream was to play for a Division 1 program. He suffered a Jones fracture in his foot toward the end of the year. He said in the video above that he broke his foot while playing ball in the rec center at SAGU after informing his coach he wouldn’t be back.
It’s important to note here just how sparingly he was used in 2018-19, his freshman season at SAGU. His season-high point total was just seven points. He appeared in 25 games.
His name means “patience” — though that virtue seemed to elude Akobundu-Ehiogu as he kicked and scratched for his place in the game of basketball. The D1 offers were not piling in. He was going to go find one.
This part is somewhat murky, but here or soon after enters one Mike Schmitz. Then a mere NBA Draft analyst, Schmitz would receive his own big break in the game years later when he grappled his way into a front office position with the Portland Trail Blazers. He’s now, of course, the Mavericks’ general manager under Masai Ujiri.
Somehow, after that stint at SAGU, Akobundu-Ehiogu ended up at UT Arlington for the 2020-21 season. He did not play anywhere the prior year, instead working with a trainer with a focus on coming back from the broken foot. He reportedly worked at Home Depot while taking a couple of classes at Collin College to improve his academic transcript before he could transfer in. Can you imagine the value he must have held to his Home Depot coworkers, standing 6’10” with a 7’4” wingspan?
Akobundu-Ehiogu would average 3.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and a jaw-dropping 3.3 blocks per game in the Sun Belt Conference in his redshirt sophomore season at UTA.
Word has it that Schmitz was already onto Akobundu-Ehiogu at the time. Word is that Schmitz knew someone at UT Arlington, and word is that connections were made. Whatever the case may be, Schmitz was interested enough in Akobundu-Ehiogu a year later to descend upon the basketball mecca of Arlington a year later to see the athletic specimen in person.
The timestamp on that post reads Nov. 1, 2021. If you cross-reference the UTA men’s basketball schedule for the 2021-22 season, you’ll see there was no game that night. That means that Schmitz was in the College Park Center, where the Dallas Wings now play, likely for a preseason scrimmage. That’s an incredibly high level of interest in an extreme far-fringe prospect, but it would come back around less than five years later, when Akobundu-Ehiogu was selected as a member of the Summer Mavs.
But first, he played two years at UTA, then another at Memphis, under Penny Hardaway. In those three seasons combined, he had a block rate of close to 17%. After that, he played in Europe for four seasons, with a Summer League stint for the Denver Nuggets squoze in last year.
If you find yourself asking whether Akobundu-Ehiogu is simply benefiting from the passing genius of the young Spaniard de Larrea or if there is some there there with his game, I’d bet on Akobundu-Ehiogu at least breaking through this year into a roster spot with the Mavericks’ G-League Affiliate the Texas Legends.
Schmitz’s whole energy as an analyst, a scout and now a prominent member of the Mavs’ front office has screamed, “I know something you don’t know” at every turn. He clearly believes in this guy, even though his offensive game clearly still needs a couple of levels of graduation. Add in the fact that the Mavericks are being put to a decision on whether or not to match the offer sheet restricted free agent center Moussa Cisse signed with the New York Knicks on Saturday, and there might be room for Akobundu-Ehiogu in the organization.
The Mavs have until Monday to decide whether to match New York’s offer to Cisse, but even if they do bring Cisse back, giving Akobundu-Ehiogu an opportunity to develop for one more year in the G League may be just what Schmitz was after all along.
Do not be surprised if the highlight dunks we’ve become acquainted with during Summer League play become old hat if Akobundu-Ehiogu spends a year in Dallas with the Legends.
If he can pull it off, it will be a remarkable full-circle moment for a kid from Nigeria whose world travels in the game of basketball have always been routed through Dallas.
Perhaps it’s kismet. Maybe Kao is meant to be here. Maybe Schmitz knew it all along.
