Where's the NBA Draft Love for CBB's Player of the Year Contenders?
Former Texas point guard T.J. Ford is the only Naismith College Player of the Year winner under 6'0", which seems almost unfathomable given the award has been handed out since 1969.
“Yeah,” Ford said, chuckling, when told this fact. “I’m aware.”
Ford might soon have company if Kansas guard Frank Mason III wins the Naismith. If not Mason, who is Bleacher Report’s pick for National Player of the Year, the other contenders are Villanova’s Josh Hart and Purdue’s Caleb Swanigan.
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No matter which of the three wins, he’ll be an outlier in at least one category. Only once has a Naismith winner not gone on to be drafted in what is now considered lottery range—the top 14—and that was former Saint Joseph guard Jameer Nelson, who went 20th in the 2004 draft. Swanigan and Hart show up in most mock drafts in the late first round or early second, but not in the lottery, and Mason is expected to either go in the second round or undrafted.
“It’s just really hard to play college basketball as a freshman,” an Eastern Conference scout said, trying to explain how we’ve reached this point where a lottery prospect is unlikely to win the Naismith Award.
It’s surprising in this one-and-done era it has taken this long to get here. It’d be easy to say the reason we’re here is the best players leave early. To a degree, that’s true. But Mason, Hart and Swanigan were going to become great college players no matter who was still in school. And even though they aren’t surefire prospects, they absolutely have a shot to play in the NBA.
“All three of those guys, you can’t put anything past them,” the scout said, “because it’s almost like they subsist on proving people wrong.”
Frank Mason III
Mason started working out with trainer Luke Cooper of Pure Sweat Basketball, a company that has an impressive list of NBA clients, including Andrew Wiggins and Dwight Howard. Most players seek out this level of training to improve their NBA stock. Cooper found out really quickly Mason had other motivations.
After one of their first workouts, Cooper asked Mason if he was ready to be finished at KU and start his professional career.
"'No, dude,'" Cooper recalled Mason telling him. "'I owe everything I’ve ever had to this place and to this university. I love these people. I love this place.'"
"He told me that day, 'If I could play at KU for four more years, I would.' He takes the responsibility of the school on his shoulders, and you can kind of tell with how he plays.”
Mason came to Kansas as a guard who could beat defenders off the dribble almost at will.
"Frank has always been able to do what he wanted without much resistance on a basketball court," his AAU coach, Ty White, told Bleacher Report during Mason’s sophomore season at Kansas.
But Mason didn’t know how to run a team, and he had an unreliable jumper with a slow release.
KU’s coaches made a change early in his career with how he positioned his off hand, and Mason gradually refined his technique.
Cooper worked with him on the finer points of his footwork, and Mason is obsessive about the details.
Cooper would feel like Mason had mastered a drill enough for them to move on, but Mason would not allow them to transition until he’d perfected the skill, repeatedly muttering under his breath, “I gotta get it right.”
“I don’t even think he knows he’s saying it,” Cooper said. “His constant desire to want to make it perfect, where most players make eight in a row, ‘I’m good.’ He’ll make eight in a row, but did I do it right? Is the footwork right? Is the angle right?”
That attention to detail helped Mason shoot over 50 percent from distance most of this season—he’s currently at 49.3 percent. If you go under a ball screen against him, you’re toast. He nails threes on spot-ups, off the dribble and on the move, which has made him an almost impossible cover.
The combination of averaging better than 20 points per game and shooting better than 50 percent from distance is so rare that only two players have done it since 1992-93, according to Sports-Reference.com (with a minimum 50 made threes).
Mason also refined his floater this summer and worked on getting off shots at different angles around the rim, which has helped him go from shooting 49.7 percent at the rim last season to 55.3 percent this year, according to Hoop-Math.com.
“The way he finishes and now the way he shoots it, it certainly puts you in a situation where you’ve got to guard him,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “And if you guard him [on the perimeter], you open up driving angles, which we all know he’s very good at touching the paint off the bounce.”
The question becomes how that translates to the NBA, and NBA scouts have become believers.
“All he has to do is point out [Toronto Raptors point guard] Fred VanVleet and [Dallas Mavericks point guard] Yogi Ferrell, because he’s so smart and he’s so tough,” the Eastern Conference scout said. “It’s really easy to overlook those guys, because you just write them off, and it’s lazy scouting to just say they’re too small and not athletic, etc., etc.
“Once you dig in and find out how tough all three of them are, that’s how they’re going to survive.”
VanVleet and Ferrell both went undrafted last year. VanVleet made Toronto’s team and signed a two-year deal. Ferrell has averaged 12.4 points and 5.1 assists since signing with the Mavs in late January. He also won the Western Conference Rookie of the Month in February.
Both were known as winners in college, as is Mason, who has won 113 games (and counting) at Kansas.
“He’s an absolute winner,” Texas coach Shaka Smart said. “Contrary to what some might believe, that’s what they’re looking for at the next level too.”
It’s more difficult to quantify toughness, but scouts typically associate toughness with showing up in the clutch, and Mason has thrived anytime it looks like Kansas is in trouble.
“You can tell his teammates always feel like they have a chance to win,” Ford said.
Last month when KU trailed West Virginia by 14 with three minutes left in regulation, Mason led a comeback and forced overtime, scoring 15 points in the final three minutes and overtime combined.
He also hit a game-winner against Duke back in November and has averaged 22.4 points in the 12 games KU has played that were decided by five points or less.
As scouts have flocked to Kansas to watch freshman Josh Jackson, they’ve come away raving about Mason.
“I don’t know if he’ll get drafted,” a Western Conference scout said, “but Frank Mason is a lot of people’s favorite player among executives and scouts.”
Josh Hart
The 2016 NBA draft gave reason for general managers to rethink their drafting habits. The rookie in that class having the most success so far is Milwaukee’s Malcolm Brogdon, who went 36th overall, yet leads all rookies in win shares.
“The only reason he’s in the league is because he’s so tough,” the Eastern Conference scout said.
It has helped that Brogdon has more to his game than evaluators saw, but his success is relevant when it relates to Hart because scouts see many similar character traits.
“Both are super smart and cultured and understand the world but are not soft by any means,” the Western Conference scout said. “Some people really care about character in the league, and being a high-character guy always helps in the process.”
Hart had an opportunity to leave after his junior year, and he tested the waters by attending the NBA draft combine.
“It was as intelligent a process by [Hart and his family] as I’ve seen,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “The decision was simple. There was no guaranteed first-round pick, there was a chance, but nothing guaranteed. And they said, ‘Hey, a degree means more to us and Josh’s opportunity to improve as a player and get his degree means a lot to us.’ The process worked perfectly for them.”
The biggest question mark surrounding Hart was his jump shot. He made 35.7 percent of his threes as junior but averaged only 1.4 threes per game.
This season Hart has bumped his percentage up to 40.4 and has also made a career-high 65 threes.
“He’s made a tweak in his shooting form that’s going to allow him to be a little bit more consistent,” the Eastern Conference scout said.
Creighton coach Greg McDermott said that early in Hart’s career no one worried about him shooting the ball from outside. He made just 26 threes as a freshman and shot 31.3 percent.
“He’s gone from inconsistent shooting it to a guy you have to have a hand up on the catch every time or he’s going to burn you,” McDermott said.
Hart is now the rare player who can score from three levels, and he’s improved his efficiency numbers. Among players who use at least 24 percent of their team’s possessions, Hart ranks fourth nationally in offensive rating (124.1), per KenPom.com.
“Jay’s done a great job just with his confidence,” Providence coach Ed Cooley said. “You have to play him all over the floor. To be honest with you, I hope we don’t ever have to see him again because he’s killed us.“
Hart is also one of the best defenders on the wing in the country.
“He could step into an NBA game tomorrow, and at a minimum, he can defend,” the Eastern Conference scout said. “That’s going to endear him to coaches and allow him to have the greatest opportunity. If you can defend and you can space the floor and be a serviceable three-point shooter, you can make it in the NBA now if you’re a wing.”
As Villanova has played more through Hart, he’s improved as a facilitator as well, which is a similar progression that Brogdon experienced as a senior. The Wildcats are as well schooled as anyone in the country at attacking the middle of a defense and then setting their teammates once the defense collapses.
Hart has taken his assist numbers from 1.9 per game as a junior to 3.2 per game this season, and that’s just one more reason he’s raised his stock.
“He’s gotten a lot better as a playmaker,” the Eastern Conference scout said. “He’s able to operate at the elbows and they run him off screens this year. He’s a pretty readymade guy and maybe his ceiling isn’t super high, but you know you’re adding a lot of intangible qualities to the team by drafting him.”
Listen to Wright, and he’s singing the same type of praise toward his star that Virginia coach Tony Bennett was preaching a year ago about Brogdon.
“He probably improved his draft stock a lot, to a first-round pick probably,” Wright said. “But more importantly, I think a year’s maturity, a year’s work on his game ensured that he’ll [enter] the NBA as a mature young man with a college degree able to handle his business. He’ll show up for work every day on time, committed. I think he can have a long career because of that.”
Caleb Swanigan
Swanigan has scored 259 points on post-ups this season, which is second among major-conference players, according to Synergy Sports. (He trails teammate Isaac Haas.)
The Boilermakers are a throwback to another era because they throw the ball into the post at every opportunity, and why would they not? Swanigan is a monster on the blocks—a rarity in today’s game—who knows how to use his big backside to carve out space. That still plays well in the college game.
But on the NBA level, where the frequency of post-ups lessens every year, Swanigan is a dinosaur.
“If this were the '90s, that guy would be the fifth pick in the draft,” the Eastern Conference scout said. “The game is different now.”
To Swanigan’s credit, he’s done everything he can to fit in the modern game. And he’s faced greater odds.
Swanigan weighed 360 pounds as an eighth-grader when he went to live with sports agent Roosevelt Barnes, who became his guardian.
Swanigan is listed at 250 pounds this season. He is so committed to burning calories at every opportunity that Purdue’s coaches found him on the treadmill in the practice gym after an afternoon game earlier this season.
“That’s unheard of when you play a game and play 30-plus minutes and the kid goes straight to the treadmill afterwards,” assistant coach Jack Owens said.
Owens raves about Swanigan’s work ethic and the time he’s spent in the gym, which is on display this season in his improved perimeter game.
Swanigan has made himself more appealing to the NBA by improving his outside shot. He’s made 31 threes and shot 44.9 percent from distance.
“The fact he can step out and hit threes will help him,” the Western Conference scout said.
Swanigan’s all-around production has also gone through the roof. He averages a double-double (18.7 points and 12.6 rebounds), and he needs only 21 more points and 10 more rebounds to join an exclusive 600 (points)-400 (rebounds)-80 (assists) club.
| Jerrelle Benimon, Towson (2013-14) | 673 | 404 | 130 |
| Blake Griffin, Oklahoma (2007-08) | 794 | 504 | 80 |
| Jason Thompson, Rider (2007-08) | 694 | 412 | 93 |
| Andrew Bogut, Utah (2004-05) | 715 | 427 | 82 |
| Tim Duncan, Wake Forest (1996-97) | 645 | 457 | 98 |
| Caleb Swanigan, Purdue (2016-17) | 579 | 350 | 87 |
The major-conference players on that list (Blake Griffin, Andrew Bogut and Tim Duncan) all won the Naismith Award that season. They also all went No. 1 overall.
A Griffin comparison would be silly, but Swanigan has some Bogut and Duncan in his game because of his passing ability.
He arrived at Purdue dead set on proving he was a power forward, but he’s actually thrived this season in a small-ball lineup that features him at center. While he’s improved his lateral quickness, it has been easier for him to thrive defensively guarding centers and staying closer to the goal to gobble up rebounds.
“I think people look at him and they assume that he’s not going to be able to defend,” the Eastern Conference scout said. “I’m not sure that’s the case, because he’s proven to be such a great rebounder, and that still has value. The thing he’s probably going to have to transition to is operating as a center.
“He’s also going to have to be able to answer if he’s mobile enough to be able to defend the speed in the NBA now, and if he is, if he finds a way to be able to do that, he’s going to be fine. That’s going to be a projection. That’s not something he’s shown capable of doing right now. But it’s hard to put it past him given how much he’s improved.”
Swanigan is only a sophomore, so he could stay in school and continue to change the perception scouts have of him.
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to stay,” the Western Conference scout said. “He’s improved so much at Purdue. Why not just keep doing that? At the same time, he has done enough to get serious looks.”
That’s the case for Mason and Hart as well. They may not be lottery talents, but they check every intangible box.
“The level of preparedness that these guys all come in with cannot be discounted at all,” the Western Conference scout said.
And as we’ve seen with players like Brogdon, Ferrell and VanVleet, sometimes productivity, character and winning should trump potential.
C.J. Moore covers college basketball and football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @CJMooreBR.
