Guest Column:Say Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
The following entry was submitted by the one and only John Maloney. As always we welcome guest’s rants, so contact us below to submit an entry.
Stephon Marbury, September 25th
“I’m not coming off the bench here in New York”
“If D’Antoni feels he needs to go in another direction with a starting point guard, that’s fine. I know I’m going to play someplace else.”
Stephon Marbury, October 7th
“If the Knicks want me to come off the bench, that’s what I’m going to do”
“It’s the coach’s choice. It’s his team and you’ve got to do what he says to do.”
Stephon Marbury deserves none of our love or sympathy.
There is no excuse for the way his miserable, selfish, failed homecoming has played out. He suffered no recurring, nagging injuries a la Pedro Martinez (last year’s “knee surgery” doesn’t count). Three Hall-of Fame point guards coached him at one time or another. The teams were a mess but he made no attempt to be a team leader, in both play and demeanor. This organization, although a mess, still paid and catered to him as their franchise player. Knick fans would have understood and still supported him had he put his head down, played hard and served as some sort of professional. It was the least the Knicks could reasonably ask for. Instead when things went south and teetered on the edge of chaos, there was Starbury to shove it off a cliff.
Brought on amidst much fanfare to serve as the star of a resurgent franchise and provide leadership, Coney Island’s own did nothing of the sort. Unless you consider purposely tanking a game to show up your coach, humiliating the organization at a sexual harassment trial, walking out on your team during a West Coast road trip and threatening to air organizational skeletons to the media unless you get your starting job back leadership. Then yeah, he was a regular George S. Patton.
Hands down, Stephon Marbury’s time here was the most disappointing, depressing and destructive homecoming of a New York athlete – even worse than Bobby Bonilla, and he needed to wear earplugs. No amount of cheap sneakers is going undo the damage he’s inflicted on the Knicks franchise.
Which is why the situation Marbury finds himself in now is delicious. He’s unwanted, stuck in a backup role and he has no leverage to extricate himself out of a situation he had a big hand in creating.
He strutted into Saratoga Springs training camp in the best shape of his career, of course. (So proud of his physique is Stephon that he made a workout video called “Starbury & Aim Sports Medicine Presents: The Rebuilding of the Mind, Body and Soul of a Superstar”.) He immediately made a scene and proclaimed himself as the starter to the press. You could see from a mile away what he was up to.
If the Knicks relented and made him the starter, he would go back to running the place while focusing on resurrecting his free agent status. If the Knicks put up a fight, he would raise a stink until the Knicks did what they always do, pull a Jim Dolan specialty and buy out his remaining contract year (and not a penny below the $21.9 million he was owed). Heck, it was all over the papers that this was going to happen anyway. Then he would then go to a better team, have a career year and resurrect his free agent status while torturing the Knicks. Either way, he gets what he wanted. And why would he think otherwise? He always had.
And then it dawns on Stephon that he won’t get what he wanted. The Knicks make it clear that there would be no buyout of Marbury’s contract (these decisions happen when intelligent basketball people are involved. I know it’s weird.) A trade is out of the question, as it’s not easy to trade flawed, surly players with massive contracts when you have no salary cap room. (Who knew?) New coach Mark D’Antoni makes it clear that he intends to go with the under-whelming Chris Duhon as his starting point guard. In a flash, the options disappeared pretty quickly on Marbury.
I imagine new President Donnie Walsh giving him a piece of paper listing his options:
a) We put a big foam basketball over your head and call you “Mr. Knick”. You entertain the crowd and shoot T-shirts into the stands.
b) We send you to high schools to educate kids as “Stephon the Sexual Harassment Panda”.
c) You go home and stay home.
d) You shut up and play when we tell you.
Which leads us to Marbury talking about “not being a distraction” and doing what it takes “to bring a championship to New York”. Wow, what a peach. Of course, no Knick fan feels that he really means it. But whether he does or not is irrelevant. He can suck it up, be a team player and come off the bench. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he plays well, earns the job back and finishes his Knick career with some modicum of professionalism and dignity. And if he chooses to pull the usual me-first crap, so what? He’s not disrupting a championship contender. D’Antoni just puts baby in a corner and the team moves on. It’s one of the few benefits of starting from the ground floor.
Donnie Walsh and Mike D’Antoni represent a restoration of the pride and success of the New York Knick franchise. Stephon Marbury does not. Which is why it is only fitting that Marbury finish out the final year of his failed tenure like this; knowing he won’t be traded or bought out, stuck with a fan base and locker room that hate him, relegated to coming off the bench if he wants to play. Maybe Marbury can take solace that he will soon to be gone, much like the rotten crony regime that brought him in and coddled him. Everyone else will be.
For more from John, head over to nykfp.com/editorials.
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Arputter
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http://theKnicksBlog.com Tommy Dee
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Arputter
