Remembering ANTHONY
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14 Remembering ANTHONY MASONby Dennis D’Agostino No one could have known that a Knicks legend Anthony Mason, pride of Queens and Springfield would be born in the stifling heat of a cramped Gardens High, had bounced around a little bit summer gym in the Catskill Mountains. overseas and had already played bits of seasons with But it was there, over just a few days in July of the Nets and Nuggets. But now, in 1991, he found 1991, where a hellbent product of Queens bulldozed himself playing for the Surf in something called the his way into a city’s heart. United States Basketball League. He was only 24, but, The story started a few months earlier. Mary Mason having already been waived three times in the NBA as worked in the Garment District and had a son who the owner of a checkered reputation, he was already could play a little basketball. Fuzzy Levane was a hoop fighting for his basketball life. gypsy who was tipped off to Mrs. Mason – and her It had been Fuzzy Levane’s job for years to scout son — by a guy named Ed Krinsky, who ran a minor out places like the USBL and the old CBA (which league team called the Long Island Surf. On that team spawned Phil Jackson as a head coach in Albany), was Mary Mason’s son, a 6-foot-7 purveyor of brute looking for players that could fill a Knicks roster space. force named Anthony. In the spring of ’91, he ran into Ed Krinsky, who told 4 5 Everything worked for him during an NBA career that spanned nearly a decade-and-a-half. In 1995, he became the first Knick ever to win the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award. The following year, thrust into the starting lineup for all 82 games, he rang up a League-leading 3,457 total minutes, still a franchise record. That same season, his speed and ball-handling skills enabled him to be the first player ever called a “point forward”, a term devised by then-head coach Don Nelson. Mase was dealt to Charlotte in 1996 in the deal that brought Larry Johnson to the Knicks as part of Ernie Grunfeld’s massive team makeover that would lead to the ’99 East title. In his first season in Charlotte, he was named second team All-Defensive and third team All-NBA. After sitting out the 1998- 99 lockout season due to injury, he would be reunited HE HAD LIVED OUT him of Mary Mason’s son. The Knicks had just hired intently and making notations on his trademark piece THE ULTIMATE DREAM a new coach and everything about the franchise was of thin blue cardboard. It took only two days in the changing, fast. New blood, new thinking, would be the Catskills — not even the subsequent trip to Southern — MAKING IT BIG IN order of the day. California for another week of play — for Pat Riley to take-no-prisoners style on both ends of the floor And so Anthony Mason got himself invited to decide that, for whatever kind of team he was going meshed perfectly with the ultra-physical Riley teams HIS HOMETOWN. Summer League with the Knicks in July of 1991. And to coach in New York, Anthony Mason was his kind of the mid-‘90s, and the Knicks wouldn’t have made suddenly, nothing about the Knicks would ever be the of player. two trips to the Eastern Conference Finals — or with Riley in Miami and earn NBA All-Star honors same again. And of course, he was. The Pat Riley Knicks had gotten close to the 1994 Finals in a season where, For two days, against teams from the Celtics and bigger stars, named Ewing and Oakley and Starks and with the Heat in 2001. ironically, he was suspended just before the Playoffs Mase only played five of his 13 NBA seasons 76ers, Anthony Mason was the best player on the Rivers and Harper, but none of them captured the — without him. floor. He ran, with blinding speed for a man his size. spirit, tenacity, toughness and, yes, danger of those as a Knick, but he was forever linked to the orange And during that time, he wasn’t just a New York and blue. A frequent Garden visitor in later years, his He defended like a demon possessed. He passed, teams more perfectly than the bull from Springfield Knick, he was New York’s Knick. he scored, he dominated. He was the one player Gardens. name still resonated as he lived to see two of his sons On a team with very few local products, Mase was play college ball, Anthony Jr. at St. John’s and Antoine among the ten on the floor that you couldn’t take He was 250 pounds of mayhem. For anyone who every inch a New Yorker, and he lived it to the hilt. your eyes off. watched it in stunned disbelief, the Riley Era officially at Niagara and then Auburn. No Knick was more visible on the streets, or in the It will probably never happen for another Knick in community, or in a nightspot following a game. He quite the same way it happened for Anthony Mason. had lived out the ultimate dream — making it big They don’t play Summer League games in places like HE WAS 250 POUNDS OF MAYHEM in his hometown. He was the kind of athlete New Kutsher’s anymore, for one thing. But it’s more than York loved best...a rough-edged hometown guy, not a that. No other player will be embraced by New York Remember that Summer League, vintage 1991, began with a now-legendary full-court brawl between superstar, who worked like hell to make it big. was not the nationally-televised, League-sanctioned, Mase and Xavier McDaniel on the very first day of in quite the same way Mase was, when he parlayed It didn’t hurt, of course, that the city had never perhaps his last gasp as a basketball player into slickly-produced basketball Summerfest it is today. training camp down in Charleston. A little later, one seen a Knick quite like Mase. No player could drive Anthony Mason had to win a roster spot playing in of the greatest-ever on-court fights featured Mase capturing the imagination of his native city. an opponent — or one of his own teammates or That’s why it was so painful, why New York took the stuffy, wood beamed Kutsher’s Sports Academy in full swingout mode against J.R. Reid (ironically, a coaches — to distraction better than Mase. No one gym, in front of an audience of teenage campers, on a future teammate and close friend) in a charity game — it so hard, when, at age 48, Anthony Mason’s heart played with more emotion. No one had that look, finally gave out...a heart that seemed as big as the city rickety World War-II vintage floor that Red Auerbach yes, a charity game — at the Garden. that build, or that mischievous grin. And no one, of had donated from the Boston Garden. Mase knew no other way to play except all-out, he once owned. It was too soon, criminally too soon, course, could have the Knicks’ battlecry of the day, or for one of New York’s own. And sitting at center court, on a splintered wooden every minute. That’s what got him back into the the team logo, or any other message that came into folding chair, was the new Knicks coach, watching League and that’s what would keep him there. His his mind carved into the side of his head. 6 7.