It was October 1996, during an otherwise meaningless exhibition game, when Mark Mason sat behind a microphone at a Portland Trail Blazers game for the first time.

He was one of three finalists who had survived an open audition to be the next public address announcer for Blazers home games, and the next phase of the interview process was a live run at the high-profile gig. Mason, along with the other finalists, would be given the chance to perform at a preseason game and the winner would be selected strictly based on his performance.

So Mason settled in that October night at the Rose Garden, nerves making him “crazy,” an untimely bout of “dry throat” triggering a little cottonmouth, and went to work. It was a classic dream-come-true moment for someone who had always longed for such an opportunity. But when the final horn sounded after the audition, there was a major problem.

“I pretty much sucked,” Mason said. “I thought: ‘Even I wouldn’t hire me.’”

But hire him the Blazers did. And an astounding 24 seasons later, Mason hasn’t merely enjoyed a front row seat to nearly half of the home games in franchise history, he’s also become a fabric of Rip City, his smooth voice and enthusiastic catchphrases accentuating the ambiance of one of the NBA’s best game-night experiences. When the Blazers host the Milwaukee Bucks Saturday, Mason will call his 1,000th game, a fitting milestone as the franchise celebrates its 50th season.

During his remarkable run, he’s endured the wrath of Karl Malone, laughed at the gamesmanship of Charles Barkley, marveled at the wizardly of Brandon Roy, called two iconic Lillard Time moments, suffered through devastating injuries — including his own — and everything in between. He’s outlasted eight general managers, seven coaches and five team presidents. He’s watched as the NBA has blossomed into one of the world’s most popular and lucrative sports. And he’s done it all while occupying the best seat in the house.

And while Mason downplays his status — he likes to say he’s only a “piece of the puzzle” and a “small part of the fabric” of the Moda Center experience — he also appreciates his role in influencing the vibe of Oregon’s most iconic sports team and its players.

“There’s a responsibility that I have,” he said. “I understand what the team image is, what the culture is, everything else. I’m not going to do anything to swim upstream on that. I want to move it forward.”

THE BEGINNING

Mason moved to Portland in 1995 for an on-air job with KEX Radio — where he still hosts an afternoon news show — and quickly embraced the town’s love of the Blazers. When the team decided to replace public address announcer Mike Stone the following year, Mason jumped at the chance to fill the seat.

The first round of tryouts were open to the public and held outdoors under the awning at old Memorial Coliseum. During the audition, candidates sat at a table in front of a huge screen that aired old Blazers games, creating a makeshift arena experience complete with a live crowd. They were asked to direct action as if they were seated courtside at an actual game.

It was a bright day, which cast a reflection on the gigantic screen, and Mason could barely make out the game action. But the Blazers liked his voice, so he survived the first cut along with Eric Stevens and Eric Anderson, and the trio was given a chance to call an exhibition game to earn the job. Then came Mason’s underwhelming performance at that preseason game.

But good news came in The Oregonian a few days later, when Harry Hutt, the Blazers’ senior vice president of marketing, was quoted as saying the team “didn't think one guy was head and shoulders above the others” in the competition. The Blazers would give each one more chance and this time it would come during a regular season game.

Mason’s dream of being a public address announcer started in the late-1980s, when he covered Sacramento Kings games at Arco Arena for KHYL radio. He told himself if he was ever given a chance to do the job, he would bring “a little flair to it” and break the traditional monotone, play-it-safe vibe of the public address announcers of that era. When he read Hutt’s quote in the newspaper, Mason was inspired.

“When I saw that, I thought, ‘OK, I guess it’s OK to stand out,’” he said. “We each got one more game and I was the last guy to go. It turned out to be my birthday, November 10, and it was against the (San Antonio) Spurs. I decided that I would do it the way I wanted to do it, not like I’ve heard other arena guys do it. I decided I would give it some life. So I punched it up. I had a lot of fun. And, literally the next day, they called and said, ‘You’re it.’”

FRONT ROW SEAT TO HISTORY, SHENANIGANS

Over the years, Mason has seen it all at the Moda Center, and like you, his favorite games mirror some of the most iconic in franchise history.

Roy’s 52-point masterpiece against the Phoenix Suns in 2008. Damian Lillard’s playoff buzzer-beaters. The quadruple-overtime thriller against the Denver Nuggets in the 2019 Western Conference semifinals. But his favorite memories involve things few have witnessed.

One year, during a Western Conference playoff series against the Utah Jazz, a brazen Malone told Salt Lake City reporters he was only packing one pair of underwear for a potential series-clinching visit to Portland. He wasn’t planning on losing, Malone explained, so he wouldn’t need to stay in Portland more than a night. “I thought, ‘How dare he say that,’” Mason said.

At the time, Mason hosted a talk show on KEX with Scott Lynn and the duo came up with a bit in which they asked listeners to send underwear to the radio station and promised to deliver them to Malone. They were overwhelmed with underwear.

“We just got inundated,” Mason said. “I mean, we got a big pile of underwear. I said, ‘How are we going to do this?’”

They hatched a scheme for Lynn to deliver them to the Utah locker room in pizza boxes before the game. So Lynn toted the boxes to the arena — there was so much underwear, they filled 10 boxes — and handed them to a clubhouse attendant before tipoff with a simple message: “Karl ordered these.”

The Blazers won the game, extending the series, and Mason assumed the gag was over. He was wrong.

It turns out, Malone had asked around, unearthed the masterminds behind the stunt, and plotted his revenge. The next game, as Mason bellowed Blazers names during pregame introductions, Malone snuck up behind the public address announcer, stuck his finger in his mouth and slipped it into Mason’s ear. Mason was the victim of a Malone Wet Willy.

A year later, when the Jazz visited Portland during the regular season, Mason was blurting out his pregame introductions when he was startled by another surprise.

“It’s dark in the whole arena,” Mason said. “I look down and all of a sudden there’s a big hand on my script blocking me. It was Karl Malone. It was pretty funny. He would come to town, I would look at him, he would look at me, point his fingers, like, ‘I’m watching you.’ It was great.”

It wasn’t Mason’s only run-in with a Hall of Famer. Another year, Mason says, a successful Blazers’ season was fueled by a “lucky ball.” Every game they played with a specific basketball at home, they won. Every game they didn’t, they lost. Eventually, someone marked the ball with a skull-and-crossbones — “because it was the ball that killed the other team,” Mason said — to make it easily identifiable.

Somehow, Barkley caught wind of the Blazers’ superstitious advantage and, during a visit to Portland, walked up to officials near the scorer’s table to complain.

“He’s standing right in front of me with the referees,” Mason said. “And he goes, ‘This ball is so old. Look at this thing. It’s barely got any bumps on it. We can’t work with this thing.’ The referee is standing right there. And he goes, ‘That’s the game ball, you can’t do anything with the game ball.’”

Barkley erupted.

“He looks down and he grabs my pen off the table and stabs the ball,” Mason said, motioning his hand up and down. “He’s stabbing at it like “Psycho.” Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. But the pen wouldn’t penetrate the leather and it broke in his hand. And he just threw it on my table. He goes, 'Well that’s a bad ball.’ I got such a kick out of it because I knew it was the lucky ball. It was funny. It was just so Barkley-esque.”

In the years since, Mason has watched in amazement as fans have hit half-court shots to win cars, members of the dunk team have puked on the court and a female contestant “bounced out of her blouse” during the timeout promotional game Hippity Hop and didn’t realize it “for three hops.”

Through it all, there’s only been one time Mason rooted for a Blazers miss. In the seventh game of his second season, the Blazers trailed the Suns 98-95 with 5.2 seconds left when Rasheed Wallace tossed a full-court inbound pass to Arvydas Sabonis near the Blazers’ three-point line. Sabonis snared the pass, twisted and heaved a shot to tie the game.

All the while, Mason, who had consumed a little too much coffee at halftime, really needed to go to the bathroom.

“I was suffering,” Mason said. “I saw Sabas at the top of the three-point line and I was like, ‘No, no, no. SABAS FOR THREEEEEE! We’re going to overtime!’ And I’m just thinking, ‘Oh my god.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

The teams went on to play four overtimes before the Suns eked out a 140-139 victory, allowing Mason to —mercifully — use the restroom.

PORTLAND VIBE

When Mason was hired, Hutt said he would hold the job for the “foreseeable future,” suggesting that nothing was guaranteed and Mason would need to grow into the role to keep it. And even though he technically is a part-time employee who gets laid off following every season, the 6-foot-9, 65-year old is entrenched behind the Moda Center microphone.

When he started, his enthusiastic style was considered a little over the top, he said, and there were some who covered the team in the local media who didn’t appreciate it. But the NBA has evolved into an entertainment spectacle over the last quarter-century and nowadays, Mason says, he feels like a guy “who’s underperforming.”

“When I hear other guys in the league, I’m like, ‘Holy cow, they’re really going for it,’” Mason said. “And that’s OK. But this is Portland and I kind of know the vibe of the city and the team and what works.”

Besides, no matter how over-the-top the NBA becomes, Mason will always be known for incorporating two unique twists into his pregame introductions. He’s the first — and only — public address announcer to introduce his team’s foreign-born players in their native languages and to use “The Letter O” rather than the No. 0 to introduce Lillard.

The idea started with Sabonis (Lithuanian) during Mason’s first year on the job and has included the likes of Nicolas Batum (French), Rudy Fernandez (Spanish), Enes Kanter (Turkish) and Jusuf Nurkic (Bosnian) over the years. It’s become one of Mason’s trademarks.

So when Mason sits behind the microphone for the 1,000th time Saturday night — a milestone that includes regular season and playoff games — it’s only fitting that “The Letter O” will be a part of his show.

“Dame made it pretty clear why he picked zero,” Mason said. "And he considered it the letter O for Oakland, Ogden and Oregon. I thought that was really cool, so I asked him, "How would you feel if I introduce you as the letter O? I don’t think it’s ever been done before. It would be different, it would stand out. Do you want to go down that road?' I don’t think he thought about it for five seconds before saying, ‘Sure. Let’s do it.’

“Really, I think it does stand out. Heck, he even had an album called ‘The Letter O.’ That’s pretty cool.”

— Joe Freeman | jfreeman@oregonian.com | 503-294-5183 | @BlazerFreeman | Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories

This story is part of The Oregonian/OregonLive’s ongoing series, Rip City 50: The moments, people and events that have shaped the Trail Blazers’ first 50 seasons.

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