How Ivy League Player Makai Mason Stacks Up to Past NBA Prospects

With the NBA draft approaching, Yale sophomore guard Makai Mason just recently rescinded his name from consideration. Mason, who first declared for the draft shortly after dropping 31 points on Baylor in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, took advantage of a new NCAA rule that allows players to test the waters of the draft until May 25. With the deadline approaching, men’s basketball beat writer David Freed takes a look at how Mason compares to previous NBA draft prospects.

Mason’s decision to enter the draft was, in a word, shocking. Mason was an effective reserve a year ago, but didn’t crack the starting rotation until this year. The withdrawal of Jack Montague unleashed Mason in Ivy League play, and the sophomore averaged 17.5 points and 4.0 assists a game after Montague’s departure, up from 15.5 and 3.8, respectively, before. In the NCAA Tournament, playing top-five seeds Baylor and Duke, he was even better—averaging 19.5 points and 5.5 assists a contest.

Yet, Mason wasn’t even close to the best player in the Ancient Eight. According to Sports-Reference, Mason wasn’t even in the top 10 in win shares per 40 minutes. While he finished with the fifth most win shares overall, that was likely as much of a product of playing extended minutes as anything else. Mason ranked ninth on his own team in Box-Score Plus-Minus—the best advanced statistic to measure per-minute performance. While those stats probably ding Mason too much for being inefficient, which was partially a result of playing heavy minutes for a team that lacked any other perimeter creators, they aren’t rosy.

Mason’s draft chances have been pilloried in other spaces. The sophomore wasn’t invited to the NBA draft combine and the Chicago Tribune wrote that he “has virtually no chance of getting drafted.” Yet, that evidence is largely anecdotal. To get a better idea for where the sophomore ranked, I decided to look at how he compared to players taken in previous years.

To get a comparison set, I scraped standard and advanced statistical metrics for every point guard taken in the three preceding draft classes (Phoenix Suns rookie Devin Booker, who plays point guard at the pro level, was included). I then proceeded to rank Mason’s stats for this year against every other player drafted.

The results were, in a word, dismal.

Mason’s ranks in the bottom third of all but three categories that were tested. Two of the three—usage rate and three-point preference—are generally larger indicators of shot-taking than shot-making. His one “elite” skill, by this estimation, is his defensive rebounding—Mason ranked 12th of the 34 point guards in defensive rebounding rate.

When it comes to catch-all metrics, he fared especially poorly. His Box Score Plus-Minus (BPM) ranked second to last, while his Player Efficiency Rating was dead last. Only Joseph Young, a rookie for the Indiana Pacers who graduated from the university of Oregon a year ago, ranked worse than Mason in BPM.

The numbers did not look better when the sample size was cut down to just the players drafted from small (read: non-Big Six conference) institutions. Mason ranked near the bottom in every major statistical category, with his shooting dropping to the back of the pack. Mason’s PER was more than eight points lower than the next highest player, while his 1.4 BPM was not even half of the next worst player and not even a fourth of the group average.

All in all, it seems safe to assume that Yale coach James Jones will see his point guard on campus next year.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.