Mason's latest moving experience

Desmond Mason has played for six coaches in his eight NBA seasons. Chris Livingston/Icon SMI Related Links SI VAULT: Portrait of the artist (03.13.00)

There are countless ways for an NBA player to get himself traded, intentionally or not. He can fuss about his playing time, whine about his contract, misbehave his way onto the police blotter, perform well below his bosses' expectations (or well beyond their budgeted payroll), wrap his sinewy fingers around a coach's throat, reserve most of his passion for his new recording career, slug a teammate, insult the local culture/nightlife/climate/fans, blow off some appearance with the team's limited partners, threaten to leave via free agency or, at the trade deadline, simply creep within a few months of his contract's end date.

Or he can just be Desmond Mason, and get relocated without doing any of the above.

It hardly seems fair that Mason, season after season, can do everything an NBA player is supposed to do -- on the court and off -- and still wind up having to forward his mail and learn a new route to the practice gym. He is on the move again this week, after being rolled into the three-team, six-player trade that sent Milwaukee guard Mo Williams to Cleveland and Oklahoma City guard Luke Ridnour to the Bucks. Damon Jones and Adrian Griffin also went to Milwaukee, while Joe Smith and Mason join the former Seattle SuperSonics in their new NBA-in-OKC home.

Mason is a 6-foot-5 swingman with a 12.5-point scoring average across eight seasons and the energy, athleticism and inclination to defend three or four positions as needed. He has a friendly personality, a family focus, an artistic bent and a generous nature, qualities that have made him popular with the home fans of every team for which he has played.

Had Mason played for only one team in one community, of course, he would be beloved by now, the sort of professional athlete young parents could safely name their kids after. Unfortunately, his career hasn't gone that way.

In February 2003, Mason was halfway through his third season and averaging personal bests of 14.1 points, 6.4 rebounds and 34.8 minutes when the Sonics decided they had to unload franchise point guard Gary Payton. A complaining free-agent-to-be, Payton had chafed raw in his relationship with Seattle owner Howard Schultz, so he was shipped out to get something -- the considerable something of Ray Allen, Flip Murray and Kevin Ollie -- in return.

Mason was needed to pry them loose from the Bucks. But having been told repeatedly that he was part of the Sonics' future, his unhappiness with Schultz, general manager Rick Sund and president Wally Walker began with, rather than led to, his trade.

"Rick, Howard, Wally told me a lot of things,'' Mason said that day, his feelings hurt. "Just from the standpoint of what the future was going to be like. ... If you feed me it, be true about it. Or just tell me you don't know, it's up in the air. Don't give me, 'You will be here, or this is what we're going to do.' ''

When Mason got to Milwaukee, he looked out the window of his downtown hotel room on a typically gray February day and saw snow falling "sideways.'' His wife, Andrea, favored open-toed shoes, he joked, and didn't even own a proper winter coat. But soon enough, the Masons settled comfortably into another smallish NBA market that values hard work and clean noses in its sports stars. The process was helped along by the three-year, $21.7 million contract extension he signed on the brink of the 2003-04 season.

"He's an important piece of what we're doing in Milwaukee," Bucks GM Larry Harris said that day. "He's the type of person you want to be with, the kind of person you want to build a team around.''

Until, that is, you don't. Mason gave the Bucks two solid seasons, starting 71 games in 2004-05, averaging 17.2 points in 36.2 minutes and hitting a career-high 80.2 percent of his free throws. He continued to lead the league in charity appearances, staging an art show at a Milwaukee gallery with proceeds donated to the St. Michael Peace Program, a hospital foundation that teaches students to manage conflict in non-violent ways.

Handy for Mason, too: Precisely two years after signing his extension and laying roots in Milwaukee (a year-round home in nearby Fox Point, the birth of his daughter, Jada), he was traded again, this time to New Orleans for center Jamaal Magloire. It was the Seattle skedaddle all over again: Mason had been assured by Harris just weeks earlier that he was an integral part of the team, even after the Bucks signed free-agent small forward Bobby Simmons.

"It's hard for me to stay this about somebody, but Larry's a snake. He's a snake in the grass,'' Mason said on a Milwaukee radio station at the time. "I mean, he told me a lie to my face.''