Trade (Deadline) Ten Years Later - Roger Mason for Nothing
Which of these players got involved in a dispute between Ice Cube and the Qatari Ambassador to the United States? The answer may surprise you!
The NBA Trade Deadline was on February 20, 2014. We’ve had a post each weekday until then looking at the NBA trades that were made in the month leading up to the deadline (most of which happened in the 24 hours beforehand). The final installment in the series will be published later today.
The Names: Sacramento Kings receive: Roger Mason and cash considerations. Miami Heat receive: Conditional 2015 2nd-round pick (never conveyed).
The Team Context: We discussed the Miami Heat about a month ago and the Kings even more recently than that. I might be inclined to revisit those discussions if this trade were impacting either team much, but Miami was effectively just cutting the final player on its roster.
The Player Context: The plan has always been to finalize the trade deadline series in the morning of February 20th so that we can really celebrate the proper 10-year anniversary. The calendar to get there was laid out weeks ago and was adhered to. Then I got a headache on Friday (drank two beers) and, for some insane reason, decided I’d just finish that day’s post over the weekend while I was in Las Vegas with my girlfriend’s family. How do you think that went for me.
I’m not going to let myself miss the milestone and what that probably means is that I’m pulling a full and honest tribute to the trade deadline by staying up all night to research fringe NBA players. The good news is that I gave myself a relatively easy one for Monday. The bad news is I am writing these words at precisely 11 PM on Monday and was planning to use Monday to write Tuesday’s post. (The REALLY bad news is that I’m writing THESE words at precisely 2 AM on Tuesday because there were too many good stories.)
So here’s Roger Mason Jr. Mason played high school basketball at the conveniently-named Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (OLGCHS), where he was named to the 1998-99 All-Met Boys Basketball Team. He played collegiately at the University of Virginia, where his contemporaries (I’m not sure “who” exactly) called him “one of the most affable basketball players you will ever meet” and his coach Pete Gillen praised him “not only for playing great but for acting in a real classy way” while at the World University Games in China in the summer of 2001. This delightful personality, probably in conjunction with the 2nd-team All-ACC performance, was enough to get Mason drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the 31st overall pick in 2002.
Mason was used sparingly in Chicago as a result of a shoulder injury he took into the NBA, with just 156 minutes in his first season and a half in the league. In December 2003, he was traded to Toronto for current New York Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson. Mason got more playing time, but the baseline was so low that “more playing time” just meant 12.4 minutes per game across 23 games and plenty more DNPs. The Raptors waived Mason in December 2004 and he began his international career, signing with Olympiacos in Greece in January 2005 and Hapoel Jerusalem for the 2005-06 season. He made it back to America on a one-year deal with the Washington Wizards, continuing to play a very limited role, but showed enough to get invited back for another one-year contract. Mason finally got his opportunity to be a real NBA player in 2007-08, getting into 80 games and averaging 21.4 minutes in each. The Wizards were only okay and Mason was still a bench player, but he got the sixth-most minutes on the team.
As a free agent that offseason with a suddenly established NBA reputation, Mason was able to sign a two-year, $7.3 million contract with the San Antonio Spurs. On a 54-28 Spurs team in 2008-09, Mason played in all 82 games, started 71, and played the second-most minutes on the team – 28 fewer than Tim Duncan, but 40 more than Tony Parker. He was 10th in the NBA with 166 3-pointers and he was making them at a 42% clip, several of which came in huge moments. But Mason’s shooting got worse the next season and his playing time decreased as a healthier Manu Ginobli and improved George Hill began to consume some of the minutes that used to be his. He tried to get traded from the Spurs, but didn’t succeed.
After that season, Mason had bounced around the NBA on a series of one-year deals, starting with New York, then going to Washington and New Orleans. During this time he ascended to eventually become Vice President of the NBA Player’s Association, gaining headlines when he accidentally tweeted out information about ongoing negotiations during the 2011 lockout. He went to training camp with the Miami Heat in the summer of 2013 and made the team as one of the final members of the roster.
Mason played 18:32 on December 23, 2013 and went 3 for 7 on field goals. He would play in 13 more NBA games in his career, but that was the final game in which he made more than one shot in a game. That includes a couple of 1-for-1 performances, but several more 0-for-2 or 0-for-3s. Mason’s final NBA game was on January 26 against his former Spurs; he took two shots (both from 3) and made one. He was inactive for the rest of his tenure in Miami.
The Trade: I don’t think anybody actually reported how protected the 2nd-round pick Sacramento sent to Miami would be, just that it would be “highly protected” and “most likely never be conveyed.” Everybody knew this was fake and nobody wanted to pretend like it was real.
The Reaction: Minimal. Andy Bailey at Bleacher Report made the point that “Miami just paid a team to take Mason off the books. Not sure how that feels, but it can’t be great.” Deantae Prince at SportingNews was more subtle, stating that “it should be noted that Miami had the option of waiving Mason Jr. before all contracts became guaranteed on January 10th.” Mason scored 8 points for the Heat in the six games he played in after January 10.
The Results: Roger Mason was immediately waived and never played for the Kings. The 2nd round pick never conveyed.
The Miami Heat used their newly-opened roster spot to sign Justin Hamilton, who they had previously cut in pre-season to put Roger Mason on the team. Hamilton played big minutes in some meaningless April games but that’s about it. This might be the most insignificant of all the deadline trades.
The Aftermath: When Donald Sterling got outed for egregious racism, Roger Mason was not employed by a basketball team but continued to serve in an NBPA leadership role. He took a lead in discussions around a potential boycott from players if Sterling weren’t appropriately dealt with by the league. Based on his performance, new NBPA executive director Michele Roberts recruited Mason to serve as her deputy executive director. Although Mason still thought he could play in the NBA for a few more years, he chose to start his executive career instead.
After a couple of years as a union executive, Mason left his post in December 2016 to transition to a league office position – only the league wasn’t the NBA, it was the newly-launched BIG3. While Ice Cube is the face and originator of the BIG3 concept, it was Mason who served as the league’s first commissioner and president. Things went, uh, so poorly that on March 12, 2018, the BIG3 sent a letter to all staff (including players and coaches) informing them that Roger Mason Jr. was being terminated for cause, with the cause being “corruption,” and that Ice Cube would take over as commissioner. Mason countered with a public statement that accused the BIG3 of a “hostile and racist” work environment and quoted BIG3 co-founder Jeff Kwatinetz as repeatedly using racial slurs to refer to athletes.
So that cannot have been a very good 15 months! The fact pattern seems to be that Roger Mason connected the BIG3 with two investors, Ahmed Al-Rumaihi and Ayman Sabi, the former of whom is the head of Qatar Investments (and former Qatari Ambassador to the United States) and the latter of whom I think was CEO of Roadhouse Grill. In July 2017, the investors formed Sport Trinity LLC and agreed to invest $11.5 million into the BIG3 immediately, with an additional $9 million to be invested over the next three years. Sport Trinity only paid $7.5 million of their initial contribution and rebuffed further attempts by the BIG3 to collect the money until February 2018, when the BIG3 initiated arbitration proceedings and cut Sport Trinity off from the company. The Sport Trinity investors claim that this came against a backdrop of them repeatedly requesting that Kwatinetz formalize the corporate structure of the company and run the operation more professionally – Kwatinetz is quoted in court documents as saying an accountant for the BIG3 “fucked up a lot of stuff.”
Essentially, it seems like Mason didn’t want to get in the middle of the increasingly-ugly dispute between his employer and his investor connections. But as things escalated to the point of alleged shakedowns outside a funeral, neutrality became impossible and Mason ended up on the side of the investors. The larger dispute grew increasingly crazy, with allegations that the Sport Trinity investment was made to gain access to the Trump administration (via Steve Bannon) and an accusation that law firm Quinn Emmanuel was using its position as counsel to the BIG3 to spy on behalf of Qatar. Mason and the BIG3 eventually settled their dispute in arbitration in October 2019, which included a statement from Mason recanting his accusation that Kwatinetz used racial slurs and the corruption claims against Mason being dropped in exchange for a statement crediting his contributions to the BIG3.
I was not expecting any of that detour and thought there were already enough business events to talk about, so we’ll move through those quickly. Mason founded Vaunt, a “platform for athletes and artists to monetize their talents and stream globally for live and digital viewers.” In April 2022, Vaunt announced that it had received a $5 million Series A funding round. Mason is on the Board of Directors at Our Lady of Good Counsel and for Signing Day Sports Inc., a platform to help student-athletes get recruited by colleges. In January, he joined Oaktree Solutions as Global Talent Business Strategy Advisor. In the jargon of Sportico, “Oaktree aims to become a player in the athlete consulting space after gaining an equity stake in Los Angeles-based Artist International Group Holdings (AIGH) in November. The creation of the sports and entertainment vertical is the highlight of the recent partnership between the two global entities. Both aim to leverage the relationships and connectivity Mason has inside the sports industry to gain an edge.” Let’s check back in on this one in 15 months.
Miscellaneous: Our Lady of Good Counsel High School claims to have over 13,000 living alumni without providing any information on how frequently they update that number (there’s only one week per year where that number would go up and 51 weeks per year where it could go down). Roger Mason stepped up in the wake of UVA teammate Majestic Mapp’s injuries.
February 20, 2024 (LOL!!!!):
Denver Nuggets receive: Jan Vesely (from WAS)
Washington Wizards receive: Andre Miller (from DEN), 2014 2nd-round pick (from PHI)
Philadelphia 76ers receive: Eric Gaynor and 2015 2nd-round pick (from WAS); future 2nd-round pick (from DEN)