What More Does Mason Jones Have To Do To Stick In The NBA?

In theory, the NBA has the 510 best male basketball players in it at any one time. Indisputably the best professional league in the world, even to hardened Europhiles, the 30 teams have a maximum of 17 spots each that they can fill. And with the highest level of competition, prestige and remuneration of anyone, those 510 spots are the most prized in the sport.

In practice, though, it tends to be more like the top 350. The players in the bottom third of the NBA are forever interchangeable with the next 150 or so players on the cusp.

There is a reason that premier European leagues, Australia’s NBL, China’s CBA and the NBA’s own G-League minor league are so replete with former (and some future) NBA players. Notwithstanding the rare Nikola Mirotic, Vasilije Micic or Sasha Vesenkov-esque exceptions – who chose not to play in the NBA, at least for now – the best of the rest are absolutely as good as the NBA’s deep bench fillers, and are more often than not just waiting for the right call to come in. You cannot make an argument that there are not better players available outside of the NBA than the Marko Simonovic and Buddy Boeheim types. It just happens to be their turn right now.

By and large, the only thing stopping these outsiders from coming inside is the absence of opportunity. The former NBA players now playing in other leagues did not necessarily get worse. They just did not crack the top 350, the threshold from which job security comes.

With this in mind, the challenge for NBA scouting teams is to find those that can. To find those who would not just show some flashes of competency in garbage time, but who could be consistent parts of a competitive team’s meaningful rotation. And I proffer that Mason Jones, a 24-year-old guard currently in the G-League, could be one of them.

Jones has played in the NBA before, signing two-way deals with each of the Houston Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers and L.A. Lakers over the last two seasons. The 6’4 guard has managed 36 games and 387 minutes in that time, too, not a bad haul for anyone, let alone an undrafted and undersized wing out of Alabama.

Four different contracts with three different teams over two years is already more opportunity than most prospects get. Yet Jones has torn up the G-League over that time span as well, to the tune of 26.3 point, 5.3 assist, 4.5 rebound and 1.7 steals per game averages in 18 contests for the Mexico City Capitanes so far on the regular season.

More impressively still, he has done on efficiencies of 52.9% from the field, 41.4% from three and 85.7% from the line, totalling a ridiculous .705% true shooting percentage. He is going up against the same players who are trying to showcase their defensive chops to those same NBA scouts, and running rings around them.

From a statistical standpoint, it is hard to see what more Jones can do. He is scoring from all areas, a three-level scorer with timing, touch, footwork, positioning, some core strength, the snakiness to draw fouls from positions where fouls should not be drawn, and a fine shooting stroke everywhere from 15 to 30 feet. He seems to be improved as a passer, too, working off of that scoring threat to find rolling bigs and cutters alike. As the level of his teammates has improved upon entering the professional game, so has his ability – and willingness – to find them.

What makes Jones on the fringes despite his excellent all-around offensive game is, in large part, his physical profile, and the perceived limitations they confer. Undersized for the wing positions, Jones also does not have the great length or turn of pace one would ideally want to see in an NBA player, which it is thought could limit his ability to get to his spot offensively, no matter how snaky he is. It is thought to be a bigger problem on the defensive end, somewhere Jones continues to improve (and has never been poor at), yet at which he has also never shone.

That said, if those things are supposedly limiting his impact, it does not show. And there comes a point where one’s limited physical profile matters not as much as their guile, skill and craft.

It is far easier to mentally accommodate lesser athletes when they were already in the NBA, know the playbooks, have the reputation and (more importantly) know the decision-makers, rather than when they are on the outside looking for a chance. Yet even in that 387 minute sample size, Jones – in scoring 195 points, grabbing 64 rebounds and passing for 45 assists – showed he belonged. He did not press. He played within the flow.

At this juncture, Jones may run the risk of falling into the trap of forebears before him such as Von Wafer and Trey Johnson, where there truly is nothing more he can do at the lower levels. But before he goes off to become one of the better players in Europe, NBA front offices must be 100% sure that they do not see a potential rotation player pass through their hands. If Tyler Johnson was for so many years, why can Jones not be? And if Buddy Boeheim can get an NBA contract right now, where is Jones’s?