Anthony Mason, the rugged forward whose toughness and relentlessness fueled his journey from afterthought to NBA All-Star, died early Saturday after suffering a massive heart attack and being diagnosed with congestive heart failure earlier this month. He was 48.
Eddie Mata, who interviewed Mason as part of his "Where Are They Now In Sports" video series, reported that Mason passed away at 2:36 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday. Peter Botte of the New York Daily News and ESPN New York's Ian Begley subsequently confirmed the 13-year NBA veteran's passing.
Longtime New York basketball writer Peter Vecsey first reported via Twitter on Feb. 11 that Mason was "fighting [for his] life" after undergoing multiple surgeries, including one procedure that lasted nine hours. Vecsey reported that Mason had reached 350 pounds, had been dealing with heart problems for the past year, and was at a New York-area hospital undergoing tests when the heart attack occurred, prompting him to be rushed into surgery.
After multiple procedures and several touch-and-go days, Mason's condition stabilized. He was reportedly "getting better" in recent days, unable to speak but responding to family members by "blinking and shaking his head and things like that," according to his son, Antoine Mason.
Mason is survived by his sons, Anthony Jr., who played college ball at St. John's before embarking on professional stints with the D-League's Sioux Falls Skyforce and clubs in France and Italy; and Antoine, who finished second in the NCAA in scoring last year at Niagara and has since transferred to Auburn. Mason is also survived by Anthony Jr.'s mother, Monica Bryant, and Antoine's mother, Latifa Whitlock.
Mason averaged 10.9 points and 8.3 rebounds per game during a 13-year NBA career spent with six teams that was marked by ferocious play on the court and explosions off it, and fierce battles with opponents, teammates and coaches alike. He was a big man with guard skills; a freight train filling the lane with hellacious handles and footwork running the break; an undersized four adept at playing in the post and on the perimeter; a brutalizing defender who also boasted a feathery touch with both hands.
He was the sort of player and personality who resisted simple characterization, as Pat Riley, who coached Mason during his heyday with the New York Knicks in the 1990s and during his lone season with the Miami Heat, told Mark Jacobson in a November 1994 New York Magazine feature:
"Anthony's what I'd call an oxymoron," says Pat Riley. "He defies expectations [...] As a player you look at Mase's size and court demeanor and think he's a blue-collar banger, and he is, but he's also very nimble, can outrun people, and has superior ball-handling skills. He's deft, almost cute. There's a bundle of contradictions about him. He's versatile, unique in that way."
Then Riley stops in mid-hagiography, forms his bituminous-eyed John Carradine half-smile, and adds, "Maybe too unique for his own good."
Mason's hard-charging, take-no-prisoners approach made him an intense competitor and fan favorite on the court, especially in New York. But it also sometimes led him into trouble off the court, including a 1996 accusation of fighting with police in Times Square over a parking ticket and a 2000 arrest on third-degree assault charges for his alleged role in a Harlem bar fight. The most serious allegation came in 1998, when Mason and a friend were charged with statutory rape for having consensual sex with two underage girls in Queens. Mason entered into a plea agreement on the lesser charge of endangering the welfare of a child, for which he was sentenced to 200 hours of community service.
"There is a Jekyll and Hyde there, and I don't know where it comes from," Ken Fiedler, Mason's former coach at Queens' Springfield Gardens High School, told Mike Wise, then of the New York Times, in November 1996. "People see more of the dark side of Anthony than the shining light side. The guy I see isn't like the one you read about in the papers."
Born in Miami but raised in Queens, Mason first drew NBA attention as a 6-foot-7, 225-pounder who played all five positions for coach Larry Reid at Tennessee State. Despite averaging 28 points, 10.4 rebounds, three assists and two steals per game during his senior season en route to a first-team All-Ohio Valley Conference selection, Mason slid to the third round of the 1988 NBA draft, where the Portland Trail Blazers nabbed him with the 53rd overall pick.
With the likes of Caldwell Jones, Jerome Kersey and Mark Bryant entrenched up front in Portland, there wasn't much room for Mason to crack the Blazers' rotation, so he spent his first pro overseas, playing for Turkish club Efes Pilsen.
"Turkey was strange," he told Jacobson. "People would follow me down the street. Then I'd go into the hotel, go to sleep, get up the next morning, go out, and there'd be the same person still staring at me."
Mason came back to the States and the East Coast for a shot with the New Jersey Nets, then coached by former Knicks great Willis Reed, who was close with Fiedler. But after Reed was bumped to the front office and Bill Fitch took over on the sideline, Mason struggled to crack the Nets' rotation, logging just 108 minutes over 21 appearances in Jersey before being cut.
From there, Mason spent time with Marinos de Oriente in Caracas, Venezuela; had a couple of 10-day cups of coffee with the Denver Nuggets that amounted to all of 21 total minutes; joined the Tulsa Fast Breakers of the CBA (where he earned the nickname "Beast"); and suited up for the Long Island Surf of the USBL, where he was pouring in buckets with his sights set on a lucrative contract to play in Italy.
Instead, Ernie Grunfeld, then the Knicks' vice president of player personnel, invited Mason to New York's 1991 training camp. His strength, quickness and tenacity impressed Riley, the new head coach, and earned him the chance to back up Charles Oakley and Xavier McDaniel.
Before long, Mason was cutting into their playing time, earning praise for his bruising play and love of "razor buzz graffiti" in his hair, and entrenching himself as an integral cog off the bench for a Knicks team that pushed the eventual NBA champion Chicago Bulls to seven games in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
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