If ever a player personified a city and a team, it was Anthony Mason. From his signature designer haircuts, to his hard-nosed, all-up-in-your-face brand of competitiveness, he embodied both style and substance. He spent five of his 13 NBA seasons with the Knicks, helping them win 270 regular season games. He played a pivotal role on the 1993-94 Knicks team, which reached the NBA Finals and lost in seven games to the Rockets. He earned Sixth Man of the Year honors the following season.
The Queens native was New York. He was the Knicks. He was hip-hop.
When he died in 2015 of a massive heart attack at 48 years old, one of the league’s most storied franchises lost a legend. Now his son, Anthony Mason Jr., is bringing the same energy his dad carried to the court to the non-profit sector and fashion industry. It’s become his life’s mission since the former St. John’s standout decided to step away from his own basketball career two years ago.
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On July 29, he celebrated his father’s legacy with a joint venture between his clothing line FallN Apparel and Ewing Athletics, the rejuvenated brand of his old man’s most famous teammate — Hall-of-Fame center Patrick Ewing. The two entities collaborated to release a limited edition remake of the Ewing Concept, originally released in 1991, the first year Mason Sr. and the now Georgetown head coach were teammates in the "Big Apple."
Mason Jr. designed the shoe, a vintage high top that comes in Knickerbocker blue and orange and features "MASON" stitched onto the heel as well as a pair of T-shirts as tributes to his pops.
“It’s just been a steady process,” said the 30-year-old Mason Jr., the eldest of his father's four children. “It came out of my passion for creating and a love for my pops, wanting to leave some type of mark that continues his name because his life was cut short.”
Mason Jr. has also worked to get Sr.’s high school gym and a street named after him. Proceeds from the sales of the sneakers and T-shirts will go to Jr.'s Family on Three Foundation, started in 2015 to impact “the youth and community by providing inner-city kids with positive role models strategic enrichment and exposure.” (The sneakers can be purchased for $130 at Ewing Athletics' Web site. The shirts are going for $35 apiece online.)
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The launch event, held at retail outlet Jimmy Jazz in Mason Sr.’s South Jamaica Queens, was a glorious occasion. The whole neighborhood as well as many of his friends from St. John's and the Knicks organization came out to pay respects to one of their own. Mikey’s Lit Ice Cream catered the event, and world-renowned barber Freddy Avila was on hand to bless a chosen few with the custom cut Mason Sr. made him famous for back in the day.
Mason Jr.'s post-basketball career is well on its way. But his story could’ve ended up much, much worse.
HOOP DREAMS AND HEARTACHE
“I could’ve easily gone crazy,” Mason Jr. said.
Death and disappointment are no stranger to him. His grandmother, Mason Sr.'s mother, died just two weeks ago. Before his father passed away, he’d already lost a brother on his mom's side of the family. Injuries derailed a once promising basketball career and a chance to follow in his father's footsteps.
Mason Jr. is 6-7 just like Sr. However, he's much leaner at 215 pounds, whereas Mason Sr. was listed at 250 pounds during his playing days, one of the most menacing physical forces in 1990s basketball. Mason Jr. averaged 14 points per game as a junior for the Red Storm but only played 19 games as a redshirt senior due to injury.
He wasn’t taken in the 2010 NBA Draft, despite being a staple on draft boards throughout his college career. He was picked up by the Heat and lasted through Summer League, preseason and training camp, but he was cut just before the season started. He wound up spending more than a half-decade bouncing around the NBA’s Developmental League and overseas, where he had stops in Bahrain, France, Italy, Japan, Venezuela and Cyprus.
The injury bug bit him again during his time in the D-League (now called the G-League) on a night he was killing. Close to a posting a triple-double with NBA scouts in the stands, he got tangled up trying to box out former Hawks forward Ivan Johnson, and he tore his labrum.
He wound up having to sit out a year.
“This out for year isn’t like when you’re out for a year in school,” Mason Jr. explained. “When you’re out for a year in college, you have something to do. When I was out for a year, where did I go? I had to go back tto Memphis (his hometown). This is real life.”
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The time off allowed Mason Jr., who was accepted into a creative and performing arts middle school for his drawing ability and majored in film and television at St. John’s, to rediscover his creative side. He started a web site and began shooting videos featuring many of his friends who were trying to forge their way onto the rap scene. He even shot a documentary.
He still remembers the day he got the call from his mother that his father had suffered a heart attack.
“That took me out,” said Mason Jr., who had grown disenchanted with foreign basketball by this point. “I hadn’t ever seen the man sick... The first two days I was there, he was very responsive. He knew I was there. He squeezed my hand. For the next two weeks, he was just dying.
“I’d dealt with death so much. I’ve had countless friends die. I just know that he’s not gone. He’s out of his body, that shell. I won’t be able to see him anymore, but he’s still here.”
HIGH-ENERGY GUY
Energy always translates.
It’s how Mason Sr. was able to rise from a third-round pick in 1988 (the draft was reduced to the current two-round format the next year) out of tiny Tennessee State to an All-Star and All-NBA level player. Mason Sr. just wanted it worse than his competition. His son is applying that same type of pressure in different spheres.
That wasn’t always the case with Mason Jr., who admitted to relying on his God-given talent more often than his toils during his playing days. Exposed to the spoils of the NBA nightlife as a teenager in the twilight of his dad’s NBA career, Mason Jr. has been almost everywhere and done almost everything. His experiences have provided a platform from which to warn youngsters still working to fulfill their dreams. They’re also what keeps him motivated these days.
“The reason why I’m progressing is because it’s all about this. It’s not about clubbing. It’s not about going out. It’s not about anything but me progressing and making this happen,” Mason Jr. said. “My whole focus this past year has been making this shoe thing happen and it happened. I can’t say I gave ball all that. I cheated the game a little bit because I was super talented, but I was able to get by because of my talent.
“The way I cheated the game, I try to give back that much more through my foundation. I can tell you all the wrong things that I did. I did all of that.”
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Mason Jr. oversaw the creation of the “Ewing Concept X Anthony Mason Tribute” and the T-shirts from thought to finish.
Initially, he was just trying to put together a logo for his foundation. He chose to go with a profile shot of his father, but as soon as he saw it on paper, he tweaked it to showcase his dad’s haircut, which read “Mase” in cursive on the side of his head. Then, he added a halo over the “M.”
People loved it, and once they heard the story behind it, it resonated immediately. Mason Jr. knew the image could serve as the first piece to a clothing line — but he didn’t stop there.
He learned that Ewing Athletics had been re-launched, and the brand was teaming up with rapper Fabolous to drop a shoe, commemorating Ewing’s time on the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team.” Mason Jr. hit up Ewing to let him know he’d be coming through to the check the release event out, but he had other things in mind, too.
“In my head, I was trying to find a way that I could connect with him and figure out how we were going to make this shoe,” Mason Jr. said. “It was just the story of Mase. What better way to tell it, if you have clothing line, than to have a sneaker to go along with it?”
Mason Jr. met Ewing Athletics president/owner David Goldberg last July. They exchanged emails. Mason Jr. and his team began the process of selecting a color scheme and shuffling through design ideas.
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They didn’t hear back from Goldberg for months.
When Goldberg finally reached out and gave him the green light, he extended Mason Jr. full creative control, but suggested he take a look at the Concepts. Mason Jr. had already done it. He sent Goldberg the design idea in a matter of days. It was only a matter of time before Mason Jr.'s dream became a reality.
When Mason Sr. died, Ewing sent Mason Jr. and his siblings a pair of the Ewing Concepts. Mason Jr. painted his a different color. Two years later, things have come full circle. He's partnered with his dad's most famous teammate on a project in memory of the man who gave him life.
“I like to base all my moves off great energy,” Mason Jr. said. "When you're moving in the right direction and you have your heart in the right place, things just start going forward."
