Why this is (literally) a big summer for Chad Baker-Mazara
CBM had a strong debut season on the Plains. But there's some clear room for improvement for the talented wing from the D.R.
SF Chad Baker-Mazara (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)
LAKE MARTIN — While his early, game-changing ejection from Auburn’s first-round NCAA Tournament upset loss to Yale ended his first campaign with the Tigers on a sour note, it shouldn’t overshadow just how great Chad Baker-Mazara was last season.
Baker-Mazara led Auburn with a plus/minus of +408 in 759 minutes of action. According to CBB Analytics, that’s the highest plus-minus of any Tiger over at least the last five seasons, and it ranked in the 99th percentile of all Division I players.
Auburn has only had three other players crack +300 in plus/minus in a single season: Johni Broome and Jaylin Williams last season, and Wendell Green Jr. in 2021-22. Baker-Mazara is in a league all by himself, and he wasn’t even in the top four in minutes played for last season’s Tigers.
Baker-Mazara’s net rating, a +20.5, was in the 97th percentile nationally. The next-closest was Williams at +5.6. He had the biggest on-court impact on Auburn’s offensive rating — which was the highest in the Bruce Pearl era — and he was No. 2 on the team in defensive rating behind Broome. (That also ranked No. 5 in the SEC.)
Only three other players in the SEC had more win shares per 40 minutes than Baker-Mazara: Broome, Williams and Alabama star Mark Sears. He was also inside the top dozen players in the league in box plus/minus, player efficiency rating and true shooting percentage.
Broome was an All-American center. Williams made the biggest difference between winning and losing. But Baker-Mazara was arguably the single-most impactful player on Auburn’s roster last season — the Tigers played their best ball with him on the floor.
And Baker-Mazara worked well with virtually everyone on the roster. Auburn’s net rating with him and Broome on the floor was +31.9, and the duo had a plus/minus of +250 together. His combo with Tre Donaldson was at +235, and his combo with Williams was at +225.
In terms of plus/minus, Baker-Mazara was in more than half of Auburn’s top 11 duos last season — with all but one of those ranking in the 100th percentile for two-man combos. (The outlier was merely in the 99th percentile.) Four of those six combinations feature players who will be back on the Tigers’ roster in 2024-25.
Baker-Mazara will be back, too, announcing his decision to return to the Plains for a second season early last month. It will be the first time he’s spent consecutive seasons at one place, dating back to his high school days. The Dominican Republic native has found his stateside basketball home.
And the next several months will be critical for Baker-Mazara, particularly in the eyes of his head coach. While Pearl got a lot out of the SEC All-Tournament team selection last season, he knows he’s capable of even more.
“Chad needs to have a great summer,” Pearl said Monday before his Fore The Children Golf Classic at Lake Martin. “He needs to continue to work on his body. … I look at Chad as a pro. He's the body type of what they're all looking for: That 6-foot-7, 6-8, guard any position.