Mawot a Mag-nificent boost for Taipans defence

• BYU's Mawot Mag was one of five new signings announced by the Cairns Taipans last week
• Mag spent four seasons at Rutgers before spending his final college season as BYU
• He was born in Sudan and moved to Australia as a two-year-old

The Cairns Taipans are no longer the little engine that could after an injection of funds saw them splash and secure marquee local Jack McVeigh at a premium price point.

Take out the significant addition of the team’s new Boomers recruit and this roster is very much a Taipans squad through and through, however, and no other new piece to the puzzle feels quite as typically Adam Forde as rookie Mawot Mag.

Despite a high-profile college career which saw Mag play four years in the Big 10 and one year in the Big 12, he is a relatively unknown name to Australian fans, so let’s dive into his story and potential significance on this Taipans roster for NBL26.

BASKETBALL BACKGROUND

Unless you follow college basketball closely, you may not have been aware of Mawot Mag prior to his signing with the Taipans, and even if you did, I wouldn’t blame you for not realising he was Australian.

Born in Sudan, Mag moved to Australia at the age of two, growing up on the west side of Melbourne. He was a part of the Longhorns basketball program before making the move to the US high school system, where he played two years at Prolific Prep, a high end sports academy - then based in California.

Marked as a three-star NCAA recruit but rivals.com and 247Sports, Mag was recruited to Rutgers, a powerhouse program in one of college basketball’s strongest conferences, the Big 10, where he went on to play four seasons, eventually carving out a significant role as a defensively-minded forward.

With an extra year to play and the NIL market in full swing, he made the move to BYU for his final graduate year, also playing a considerable role for the team, particularly as the season wore on.

Mag has never been a box score stuffer, the forward never averaged double digits throughout his college career, but created a name for himself as one of the best defenders in college basketball, and his impact is reflected on just how sizable his minutes were in high major conferences across the peak of his NCAA career.

AN INSIGHT INTO HIS GAME

As noted, Mag’s box score production might not scream difference maker, but his impact is pronounced. In his senior year for Rutgers, opposition head coach Kevin Willard described Mag as “probably the best college defender I have seen for a long, long time,” and as “one of the truly elite defenders in the sport".

Rutgers coach Caleb McConnell himself had similar praise back in 2023.

“Defensively, he’s just been a monster. I always told him, ‘Mawot, you’re a bad boy defensively’."

There are some players that change games with a highly disruptive level of defensive ‘stocks’ (steals and blocks), and while Mag is certainly active stealing the ball (1.5 steals per 40 across his five seasons), his value lies less in defensive playmaking, and more in his incredible ability to contain players on the ball.

‘Able to defend one through five’ is a label that unjustly gets thrown around too freely in basketball discourse at times, but Mag may not be far off deserving it.

At 6'7", Mag is most naturally a three, but he’s incredibly strong, allowing him to handle bigger and stronger mismatches, but he’s also undeniably deft moving his body on the perimeter with great footspeed and overall nimbleness. Putting it all together, Mag plays with an extremely competitive motor, squeezing every bit of defensive potential out of his physical attributes. In short, he is an on-ball stopper, and someone you can throw on everyone from Kendric Davis and Bryce Cotton to Kristian Doolittle and Casey Prather and expect some level of success slowing them down.

Mag’s tenacity extends to every other aspect of the game, too. Expect him to be jumping on loose balls, hustling for rebounds - all the one-percenters we like to associate with ‘winners’. He’s an Adam Forde player through and through.

We’ve established that Mag is a ready-made defensive asset at the NBL level, but the offensive end is another story, and his success on this end of the floor will be what determines his ultimate upside.

Mag is a limited offensive player who does not create offence for himself - what we would reductively often refer to as a ‘three and D’ player, which would make sense if he was a consistent three-point shooter.

Mag’s shot has been an area of issue for most of his college career - the form doesn’t indicate that of a natural shooter, and in his four years at Rutgers, he shot 26.3% from beyond the arc on 2.8 attempts per 40 minutes, as his primary shot type. That’s far from ideal.

His graduate year at BYU told a different story - logging a significant bump in efficiency, 39.7% from three, on a career high 4.5 attempts per game. It’s clear that Mag has put time and effort into his shooting, and this is evidence that it is reaping dividends, but given its outlandish deviance from the rest of his shooting history, and the fact that he’s three-point diet was of feet set, ‘you need to shoot this’ type threes, let’s not assume he’s going to knock down an appropriate amount of shots not to be labelled as an offensive liability until we see it.

Mag does use his motor to create offensive opportunities without using the ball - he gets points off steals, runs the lanes aggressively, is an excellent cutter, and hunts the offensive glass. He’s just not a ball-handler in the half-court, and while he was posted up and showed flashes of attacking closeouts into short jumpers at Rutgers, anything attacking mismatches or getting to any spots with efficiency is not a currently effective part of his game.

HIS FIT WITH THE TAIPANS

It goes without saying, the player I’ve described is one we can all imagine Adam Forde will love. He personifies the grit, effort and defence-first mentality that Forde’s teams hang their hat on. But how does Mag’s skill-set realistically fit with this year's roster?

For all the excitement around the Taipans roster this offseason, there is one clear limitation, and that’s offensive creation and ball-handling, with import point guard Ashton Hagans the only real perimeter creator. Even Kyle Adnam, the team’s backup point guard, has been overwhelmed as a primary ball-handler in key NBL situations over year’s past. With Reyne Smith an exclusively off-ball player at the two, there’s a clear need for ancillary ball-handlers, and Mag does not fit the bill.

In a much more positive sense, the Taipans are loaded with shooters to help accommodate for any outcome where Mag does not shoot the ball well as a rookie. Any line-ups that have some combination of Jack McVeigh, Sam Waardenburg, Kyrin Galloway and Reyne Smith should have some room for leeway for shooting at the other positions, and indeed the spacing should help open up opportunities for cuts, too.

In many respects, Mag feels primed to bring a similar presence to Alex Higgins-Titsha last season, given their similar skill-sets. Here’s a comparison of their top four play-types as an indicator.

That’s all well and good, until factoring both of them playing together in the second unit. With Hagans and Adnam the two ball-carriers, and Smith the only other real guard on the roster, is there enough creation and scoring volume to accommodate two opportunistic off-ball athletes on the offensive end with limited shooting capabilities?

It appears Forde’s hopeful answer to this question lies in putting some extra offensive responsibility into the hands of Sam Waardenburg and Admiral Schofield, but it’s a plan that leaves me with a level of concern.

Defensively, this team is exciting, and between Waardenburg, Lee, Schofield, Higgins-Titsha and Mag, there’s the personnel for this to be an elite team. It’ll just be about achieving that whilst placing offensively tenable line-ups out on to the floor, which is where Mag may end up drawing the short straw in the rotation at times.

SUMMARY

Mag is an extremely exciting defensive prospect, and in my mind a potential defensive player of the year candidate, opportunity pending. With his limited offence and potentially inopportune timing trying to find minutes on a Taipans rotation in need of enough ball-handling and creation, Mag’s minutes may not be what he could deserve in year one, but long term he feels like the perfect player to thrive under Adam Forde and carve out a career as a dominant role player in the NBL, eventually.

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About the Author

Michael Houben is an Australian basketball writer and scout based in Melbourne, Victoria. As well as covering the game as a journalist, Michael supports US colleges to identify and recruit Australian talent as the owner of Airtime Scouting, and supports grassroots athletes through Airtime Basketball.