FanHouse Roger Mason

One question for the San Antonio Spurs: Now what?

Sure, it's possible the Spurs can put together a nice effort on their homecourt in Game 5 on Tuesday night and push their series against the Mavericks to a sixth game in Dallas.

And maybe the Spurs could even follow that up with an unlikely Game 6 win on the road and make their first-round series a seven-gamer.

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AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- The trade deadline came and went without the Spurs making a move -- although, if you believe Gregg Popovich, it wasn't for lack of options. "Sure, there were like five or six things we almost did," Popovich said in his best deadpan. "Huge trades. And then at the very last second we said no to all of them."

OK, so Pop was kidding -- he had reporters in stitches a couple of times during his brief pregame meeting Thursday evening -- but there's no denying that rumors had surrounded his club all week. Among the Spurs who heard his name mentioned the most was Roger Mason, and hours after he learned once and for all that he was staying put, I caught up with him for a few minutes in the Spurs' locker room.

All-Star weekend is less than two weeks away, so the press releases are coming fast and furious as to who's going to be participating in all of the events. We told you about H.O.R.S.E. on Tuesday, and today, we bring you the field for the 2009 Foot Locker Three-Point Shootout.

Jason Kapono will defend his title and attempt to win the event for the third straight year, and he'll be facing a group of players that collectively have a total of zero three (and counting) prior appearances in the competition.

Check out FanHouse's NBA Preview.

This is not a division. It is a gauntlet. A spiked, imperial gauntlet inhabited by minotaurs, pterodactyls, stone giants, warrior pygmy tribes, and other things that go bump in the night. There is no sense of "If we can just make it to .500" in this division. .500 means nothing. .500 is for the Central division.

The Southwest Division hosts two former MVPs, the MVP runner-up from last season, the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, the reigning Coach of the Year, a bazillion All-Stars, elite shooters, elite defenders, elite scorers, and Ron freaking Artest. Yeesh.

There are not headlines here. There are omens, prophecies, and obituaries.

It's been rumored that Brent Barry wants to go elsewhere, and that seems to be just fine with the San Antonio Spurs. Barry has seen some interest from the Suns and the Rockets, with Houston being the leading candidate to sign the aging sharpshooter. Before Barry has been able to reach a deal elsewhere though, the Spurs have already replaced him with a version who happens to be about nine years younger.

The Spurs signed free agent guard Roger Mason to a two-year deal worth $7.3M, and theoretically should be able to step right in and contribute, Brent Barry-style. Barry shot almost 43% from three-point land last season on 112 attempts, while Mason hit on almost 40% from downtown, over a whopping 327 attempts -- statistics certainly skewed by the Wizards' run-and-gun (read: no conscience) style.

It's not that the Wizards didn't want to retain Mason's services ... well, that's what they said, but their actions of not actually extending him an offer kind of speak louder than their alleged wishes, right? Anyway, Mason is likely to see more playing time and lots of open threes from the corner playing for the Spurs, both of which are things that he thinks will increase his value for his next contract negotiation two years down the road.

Making frequent "jokes" about a late 80's "comic" like Dorf on a frequent basis probably will not fare me well.

With that out of the way, enjoy Caron Butler, Roger Mason, Jr. (sick gold pants), Rock Cartwright, Chick Hernandez and Darrell Green balling it up at the Congressional. You know this as "Tiger's Tournament", perhaps. Several of these gentlemen will not likely be making the official cut.



See, I actually think caddying for this event might be more fun than attending Caron's birthday party. Okay, not really. Still fun though. Great work by Dan Steinberg.