Emmanuel Mudiay gets $1.2 million contract to play one year in China with Yi Jianlian’s team

Class of 2014 star Emmanuel Mudiay has reached an agreement in principle with the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the China Basketball Association on a one-year deal that will pay him a total of $1.2 million, a source confirmed to CBSSports.com on Tuesday.

This development, earlier reported by Yahoo Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, comes a week after Mudiay announced he’s skipping college in favor of a contract overseas that would help alleviate some of his mother’s financial concerns. Clearly, this deal makes that possible.

But multiple sources told CBSSports.com that Mudiay’s actual motivation for bypassing a year in the AAC is rooted in the fact that he was facing eligibility concerns — both amatuerism concerns and eligibility concerns — and that the odds of the 6-foot-5 guard ever being cleared for freshman eligibility were slim, at best, mostly because he spent two years at Prime Prep Academy, which a source told CBSSports.com has never actually had a class accepted by the NCAA for the purposes of initial eligibilty.

Mudiay is projected as a consensus top-10 pick in the 2015 NBA Draft.

Former Texas standout Royal Ivey played for the Southern Tigers last season.

via Emmanuel Mudiay gets $1.2 million contract to play one year in China – CBSSports.com.