Mason, who played 13 seasons in the NBA and was named Sixth Man of the Year in 1995 while playing for the New York Knicks, suffered a heart attack earlier this month.
Mason made his mark in the NBA while playing for the Knicks for five seasons. His bruising style epitomized the Knicks' rugged play and helped New York reach the 1994 NBA Finals. The Knicks lost the Houston Rockets in five games.
Mason was a key part of the mid-1990s New York Knicks teams. He made one All-Star team, while playing for the Miami Heat in 2001.
But he also had a checkered past. In Riley's days with the Knicks, he suspended Mason twice because of misconduct. He faced charges of gun possession, battery on a police officer, and sexual assault. Felony charges of statutory rape and sex abuse against Mason were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea to endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor in 1998.
The inciting a riot charge was an interesting tale.
"There are things that he's done which people would surely criticize him for, and he has criticized himself," said Don Cronson, Mason's New York-based agent in 2000. "He intends to leave his troubles behind him."
"I might have to become a hermit, as much as I wouldn't like to," Mason told a South Carolina newspaper before being traded from Carolina to the Heat. "I have to put the best interest of my family first. There won't be another time."
And then? There was 'another time.'
Mason was hit with a harassment violation Christmas night 2007 after he slapped around a woman who caught his eye at a club, according to police and his alleged victim.
When Christine Douyon, 23, rejected his best shot, the hulking power forward whacked her across the face, knocking down her pocketbook and sending its contents spilling across the floor of Home on West 27th Street, she and cops said.
Mason, 41, ducked arrest because Douyon wasn’t seriously hurt, police said.
Good guy.
[FOX]
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