WP article on Mason [Archive] - SpursTalk.com Forums

lurker23

01-02-2010, 12:59 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101751.html

So, your siblings -- Frank, Adrienne and Lauren -- they all graduated from college and are doing very well in their respective professions?

"Yes," Roger Mason Jr. said.

And no one in your family relies on you for financial support?"

"No."

And your parents, they would be ultra-supportive even if you didn't play in the NBA?"

"Definitely."

Be honest: No baby-mama drama of any kind? I mean even Tom Brady has an out-of-wedlock kid.

"Of course not."

And you expect people to believe you actually wanted to be a doctor, like your late father, and you didn't give up that dream until college recruiters started beating your door down?

"That's the truth. Really."

Poor Roger Mason Jr.

No controversy, no criminal complaints, no lingering resentment even for his hometown team who let him go. His life story should be titled "A Ballplayer Without Baggage" -- with a foreword written by Grant Hill or Antawn Jamison. He will never be on the front page of the New York Post or be the subject of a "Dateline NBC" exclusive.

All those kids he sponsors at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, who wrote essays about the value of hard work last summer and who will Skype with their favorite NBA player this year thanks to Mason's donations, get an evolved athlete with a keen social conscience pretty much to themselves.

In a "Text Like Tiger" world bingeing on scandal and canceling sappy sitcoms, he's a grown-up Huxtable kid. We, the media, might undervalue him more than the Wizards did.

"The drama has never done anything for me," said the 29-year-old guard for the San Antonio Spurs, who make their annual pilgrimage to Verizon Center Saturday night to play Mason's old team. "It's not about that. If I can use the little celebrity I do have to help others, great. But I don't need the off-court drama to help with publicity."

Whenever a former Wizard returns to Washington with an important role on a bona fide playoff team, the lament usually begins, "Why did they let him go?" -- which Mason hears often now.

Maybe not the way Rip Hamilton, Ben Wallace, Chris Webber and Rasheed Wallace used to hear that regret. But when the entire Big-Shot-Rog package is considered -- what a veteran role player would have meant to a rudderless 10-20 team at this exact moment -- Washington's own should hear it more than the others.

Seriously.

Except for Hamilton, jettisoned for basically not passing the ball to Michael Jordan enough, 'Sheed and C-Webb were too busy being young knuckleheads here. And Big Ben was still physically developing. If you buy the argument that Rip was never going to be able to star as long as Michael was around, none was yet ready to be what they became. The timing was off.

But Roger Mason was ready. The timing was perfect. He was coming off his most important year in 2008, finding his stroke from beyond the arc like he never had as an NBA player, knocking down crucial three-pointers at the end of tight games for the Wizards, filling in perfectly in a banged-up back court.

And unlike the bigger names, he never developed a complex about starting or starring. Having been the guy in college at Virginia, he believed in himself enough to know it was possible. But after a torn labrum and surgery suffered in pre-draft camp sent him to the second round of the draft -- and after stops in Greece and Israel -- his sole goal was to carve out a niche for himself in a league that had yet to create one for him. So being a veteran role player never made him antsy or insecure, as if his career had passed him by.

"For a few years, all I wanted was a chance, any job in the NBA," Mason said. "When that's your mind-set, you'll be a part of anything they ask you to be a part of. That's still my mind-set. I mean, obviously I want to play and be given the opportunity in big spots. But the more I go in with a survival mind-set, it feels like the bigger my role becomes. Rather than stress over not playing and complaining, I became obsessed with getting prepared for whatever second or minute I did play."

His past isn't without obstacle; Mason merely never used it as an excuse.

Roger Mason Sr., a well-connected physician in the District who once headed Howard University Hospital's ophthalmology department, died of kidney failure when Roger Jr. was 11 years old.

"It was devastating for him and the kids, but it wasn't going to be a crutch for us why our world fell apart," Marsha Mason-Wonsley, Mason's mother, said. "It's difficult. It's hard. But other families go through it all the time. And so we did what we always do: We moved forward."

When Mason was 14, Marsha married Otis Wonsley, John Riggins's former backup for her son's favorite team. Wonsley began taking his stepson to training camp, "where I heard plenty of good Riggins and Joe Gibbs stories," Mason said. "I distinctly remember meeting Brian Mitchell when I was in middle school. It was incredible."

"Like any kid, you're rebellious at first when your father passes and someone else comes along," he added. "But over time, it was great to have Otis in our lives. He had so much experience as far as being a professional athlete. He taught me so much."

As Mason continues speaking, the refrain keeps going on in your head: Why did they let him go? Not so much for basketball reasons, but the mere notion that a person of deep character and deeper roots like Roger Mason could help bring stability to an all-over-the-map locker room.

A guy from an overachieving Silver Spring family with no apparent dysfunction, who started his high school career not at an athletic powerhouse but instead Sidwell Friends, where he was classmates with Chelsea Clinton.

A guy who plies his trade for whatever team lets him play, who would never volunteer to anyone that his foundation gave three Baltimore families, through child protective services, generous gift certificates to Wal-Mart during the holidays. Because, as his mother said, "it's not bad news about an athlete, so these days who would even write about it?"

What franchise in search of its soul could possibly need a player and a person like that? Hmmm.