He had shoulders that seemed to stretch from the corner of 33rd and Seventh Avenue to the West Side Highway. Anthony Mason stood defiantly in the lane alongside Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley during a long-lost time when nobody would dare mess with the Knicks.
He was the personification of heart, and that giant 48-year-old heart finally gave out on Anthony Mason Saturday morning, and a New York basketball season without reason on the court mourns the worst kind of loss. The loss of one of our own. One of our own basketbrawl gladiators.
He was a manchild, prone to bouts of petulance that sometimes drove Knicks coach Pat Riley mad, but he was our manchild, our rough-and-tumble tough guy from our mean streets in and around Springfield Gardens High, where he revered our Ken Fiedler, his coach and surrogate father.
We called him Mase, and he became a fan favorite in the same way that John Starks did, because he came from nowhere as a nobody and refused to go away until he became a somebody.
Mase so often played with a ferocity and hunger you might expect from an underdog who scratched and clawed his way to the NBA — to his hometown Knicks — from overseas in Turkey and the CBA and USBL.
“When he gets riled up,” Riley said once, “he plays better and harder.”
Mason could be as hard-headed and uncompromising as Riley, and so it was inevitable that they butted heads. Mase could be an insubordinate hothead when he felt wronged, and Riley knew how to push his button, suspending him right before the 1994 NBA playoffs, ultimately instructing him to hound and harass Hakeem Olajuwon in the Finals.
“Have gun, will travel, baby,’’ Mase told Sports Illustrated. “I’ll take anybody they ask me to — guard, forward, center — and try to lock ’em up. Olajuwon’s a great player, but it doesn’t matter who I guard. I’ve played in Turkey, Austria, Venezuela, the CBA, the USBL, West Fourth Street Park. I had to travel a long way. It keeps you hungry. You know that you never want to go back.’’
Mason and Oakley were the belligerent, blue-collar Bully Boys of Spring who eagerly elbowed and bloodied 98-pound weaklings and Michael Jordan alike.
Mase, however, was more than an enforcer. He had amazing footwork for someone 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds, a nice handle, and could distribute the ball beautifully. And after Riley faxed his way out of town, new Knicks coach Don Nelson made Mase his point forward.
He wore No. 14 and creative barbershop etchings, and will be remembered as a Knick who played with his hair on fire. Just because he never won a championship here doesn’t mean he won’t rest in peace with the heart of a champion.
Source Newyork Post
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