The Cleveland Cavaliers are rounding out the roster after selecting Meleek Thomas 34th overall in the NBA Draft on Thursday. They’ve signed several undrafted players to exhibit 10 contracts and have added a 6’11” center from Miami, Ernest Udeh Jr., to a two-way deal, according to Chris Fedor of cleveland.com.
Udeh’s journey to the NBA hasn’t been straightforward. He started his collegiate career at Kansas. He then transferred to TCU after his freshman year for two seasons, and then finished it at Miami.
This past season, he averaged 6.7 points per game for the Hurricanes.
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Udeh is a strong, physical big man who is an elite rebounder. He averaged 9.2 rebounds last season, which included 3.1 per game coming on the offensive end.
Most of Udeh’s damage offensively came at the rim. He completed 72.7% of his looks from the field, with much of that coming from finishing pick-and-rolls.
The strength and physicality that helped him as a rebounder and play finisher in college also made him a good rim protector. Udeh averaged 1.4 blocks per game. That was good enough to earn a spot on the ACC All-Defense team.
The concerns come from Udeh’s lateral quickness and lack of polish as an offensive player. Udeh has size, but projects to be mostly a drop-coverage big defensively. Those have value, but aren’t necessarily the most versatile.
Offensively, he hasn’t shown good touch as a passer — just 0.6 assists per game last season — and hasn’t shown much shooting touch as he converted just 51.2% of his looks at the free-throw line last season. Is his offensive game versatile enough to be a standard contract player at some point?
As of this moment, the Cavs have all three two-way spots filled with Tristan Enaruna and Riley Minix under contract. However, Minix’s spot could become available in the near future as reports from last week suggested that he was close to signing with ASVEL in France.
