USC’s decision to dismiss top scorer and three-point shooter Chad Baker-Mazara on the doorstep of the postseason left many wondering Sunday why coach Eric Musselman would seemingly sabotage his team’s already-tenuous hopes of making the NCAA tournament.
To Gilbert Arenas, the former NBA star and podcast host whose son Alijah is a freshman guard with the Trojans, the move was particularly baffling. So he took to social media Sunday, wearing Baker-Mazara’s No. 4 USC jersey, to share his frustration.
“Right before the tournament? This is what we’re doing?” Arenas said in the video. “Our best player? Mr. I-Get-Buckets? Every night, he brings it every night. Guaranteed 18, 20 every night.”
“When you the best player on the team, whatever you say, you right,” he continued.
Chad Baker-Mazara was a reliable scorer for the Trojans but not a dependable teammate.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The move to part ways with Baker-Mazara was not based on an isolated incident, a person familiar with the decision but not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times, but rather the culmination of a season’s worth of issues that boiled over after the second half of Saturday’s home loss to Nebraska.
The Trojans were trailing by three points three minutes into the second half when Baker-Mazara took off in transition after Cornhuskers forward Pryce Sandfort, who was driving for a layup. Baker-Mazara closed the gap and swatted the ball. Then he fell hard on the hardwood.
Baker-Mazara had missed three games last month because of a knee sprain and sat out practices throughout the season because of nagging minor injuries. After lying still on the court for a few seconds, he got up and walked down the tunnel toward the locker room.
Baker-Mazara returned a couple of minutes later with a noticeable limp. He sat down in a courtside seat on the baseline, two chairs down from injured guard Rodney Rice.
The sight of Baker-Mazara sitting away from the rest of the team sparked questions after the game, but it wasn’t that unusual; he sat there at various times this season. What was odd was how Baker-Mazara handled the rest of the half after he told staff he wasn’t able to play.
As USC unraveled without him in the second half of an 82-67 loss, Baker-Mazara was mostly detached from the action. At one point, he went behind the USC bench and chatted with fans in the first row.
At the end of a season filled with similar such moments, patience had worn thin. By the next morning, Baker-Mazara no longer was with the team. USC did not announce the reason for his departure.
The staff was well aware, when it brought in the senior last spring, that his long history in college hoops was littered with similar troubling moments. USC was Baker-Mazara’s fifth school in six seasons.
“There will never be a dull moment,” Musselman said in May. “Might be that I’ve got a little more on my plate.”
Baker-Mazara spent his freshman season at Duquesne before transferring to San Diego State. He was named Mountain West sixth man of the year as a sophomore but was kicked off the team by coach Brian Dutcher after he skipped classes, failed tests, missed assignments and fell so far behind on his academics that he couldn’t catch up.
Baker-Mazara told the San Diego Union-Tribune last spring that it was “a growing-up moment.” He assured everyone he’d learned his lesson.
Chad Baker-Mazara goes up to dunk under pressure from Indiana forward Sam Alexis at Galen Center on Feb. 3.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“Some people have to go through it in different ways,” Baker-Mazara told the Union-Tribune. “I had to go through it that way. … My parents were both mad. That was weeks of earfuls: ‘Man, what are you doing?’ It was weeks. I had to get my ear chewed off a couple times.”
He ended up at Northwest Florida State, a junior college in Niceville, Fla., before signing with Auburn. Dutcher spoke with then-Auburn coach Bruce Pearl on the phone, according to the Union-Tribune, and told him Baker-Mazara’s issues weren’t on the court; he “just needs to get his life in better order, be more organized, be more on time, do all the little things.”
Pearl and Auburn proved to be a good fit, though Baker-Mazara earned some ire there too after he was ejected in the second half of Auburn’s two-point tournament loss to rival Alabama for elbowing a Crimson Tide player in the back of the head. Pearl later defended him on social media.
Pearl, now a TV analyst, said the guard is “an incredibly talented kid with a real gift” but his “emotions at times have gotten the better of him.”
“He helped us get to the Final Four, we won a league championship with him,” Pearl said on FS1’s “Wake Up Barstool” on Monday. “On a good day, he would’ve been about the 20th-best player taken in the NBA draft last year.
“But we all know that Chad has bad days.”
On good days, Baker-Mazara routinely jolted the Trojans’ offense to life. When Rice went down with a season-ending shoulder injury in November, Baker-Mazara became even more vital and responded, averaging 26 points during the first seven games without Rice. Against Nebraska, Baker-Mazara scored 14 points in 16 first-half minutes. Against UCLA, he knocked down three consecutive three-pointers. The previous Saturday, he scored 14 straight points.
But there also were stretches of the season in which Baker-Mazara’s availability remained a question. He sat out practices ahead of Big Ten play and dealt with what was deemed a nagging neck injury, only to show up in the lineup against Michigan and Michigan State. He averaged just 20 minutes across both games.
By March, Baker-Mazara’s less-productive moments had started to outweigh his contributions in the eyes of USC’s staff. Though, with time running out to save their season, how the Trojans plan to replace that production is a question everyone — not just Gilbert Arenas — is asking.
