In his three seasons at transferring from Ohio, Mark Sears developed into Nate Oats’s high-usage offensive focal point in Tuscaloosa with the ultimate green light to pull up from three and orchestrate the pick-and-roll at his discretion. Sears's savvy offensive style and left-handed shot drew comparisons to Jalen Brunson, a former 33rd overall pick out of Villanova turned New York Knicks superstar, during Alabama’s 2024 Final Four run, but some crucial differences in their games could prevent Sears from following Brunson’s trajectory in the league.
Sears leaves Alabama for the NBA Draft as a two-time All-American and the most accomplished player in program history, but his transition to the next level could be a difficult one.
Lack of size could leave Sears waiting on draft night
For starters, Brunson measured in at 6-foot-2 ahead of the 2018 NBA Draft and weighed nearly 200 pounds. Sears checked in at just south of 5-foot-11 and 15 pounds lighter than Brunson. Both are undersized guards, but the three-inch discrepancy is meaningful for Sears’s NBA outlook, in the short term dropping him into the late second round if he’s selected at all on Wednesday night, and in the long term limiting him to an off-the-bench role at risk of being over-exposed on the defensive end.
The other issue for Sears is his lack of drop-off in his final season with the Crimson Tide. In 2024, Sears was one of the most efficient scorers in the country, not just averaging 21.5 points a game, but doing it on 51/44/86 shooting splits. His 66.7 percent true shooting was 99th percentile, an impossibly difficult level for a player with a 25.8 percent usage rate attempting 16.0 field goals per 40 minutes (according to CBBanalytics.com)
In 2025, however, partially because defenses found better ways to run Alabama’s three-point happy offense off the line and force them into the no-man’s land that is the mid-range, and partially because Sears didn’t seem to get the same level of separation from defenders and was more routinely exploited on the defensive end for his athletic limitations, those numbers plumetted. Sears scored 18.5 points on 40/35/84 shooting splits and a 57.5 percent true shooting percentage that was 78th percentile. He was still a good shooter, just not an elite one, and that slim margin could make or break his career.
Shooting is a major swing skill for Sears
The best case scenario for Sears at the next level, considering his size, is to come off the bench as a third guard who can run the offense in spurts with real shot gravity off the ball and proficiency as a pick-and-roll initiator. However, if Sears does not shoot the ball at an elite level in the NBA, he won’t provide spacing off the ball, it will be more difficult to attack closeouts, and defenders can go underneath screens and mitigate his ability to get to the paint to finish or look for kickouts to shooters.
Instead of Brunson, the more apt NBA comparison might be another lefty who spent last season with the Knicks, Cameron Payne. Payne has spent 10 years in the NBA as a bench scorer, shooting just under 37 percent from three. Even at 6-foot-3, Payne has similar defensive limitations, but he’s useful as a third or fourth guard in small doses, and that’s ultimately Sears’s most likely destiny.