Hoopshype.com readers may recall a recent column I wrote on Stephon Marbury, in which I basically called out the Knicks for the way they’ve handled this rather noxious situation this season. The story also contained the following: “Many teams wouldn’t take on Marbury at any cost, which is probably going to be evident when he does extricate himself from his current situation and becomes a free agent. His track record just isn’t all that overwhelming.”
Well, I still stand by the second sentence.
There apparently may be a soft landing spot for Marbury in Boston once (or should we say ‘if?’) he does work out a buyout with the Knicks. To date, Marbury has shown little to no inclination to accept a buyout. As long as he sticks with that rather Neanderthal strategy, he will (a) remain a Knick in roster-spot only and not play a minute this season and (b) forfeit whatever chance he might have this season of getting on with his basketball life.
And until that happens, there’s no place for Marbury to go. To the vast majority of ordinary and even extraordinary wage earners out there, it has been and remains incomprehensible that Mabury would not agree to give up a portion of his $20.8 million to secure his freedom. He’s made well north of $100 million playing in the NBA. And he’s drawing a line in the sand over $1-2 million, some of which he’d immediately recoup by signing with another team and the rest he could recoup with a new deal? Unfortunately for Marbury, this position is what’s driving the ‘reputation discussion’ these days. As in, ‘how can he be so stupid? What is he thinking? Is it just about the money?’
While I am not a big Marbury fan – and I believe I am in the majority on this – I have trouble seeing a downside to him coming to the Celtics. You have to think he would be willing to accept a backup role – if he isn’t, it’s ‘end of discussion’ – and would be on his best behavior. If he decides to go into Knucklehead Mode, well, that’s what waivers are for. The Celtics wouldn’t eat more than a veteran minimum guarantee, pro-rated.
Ever since James Posey signed with New Orleans last summer and PJ Brown retired, apparently for good this time, the Celtics have known they need to bulk up their bench. While Marbury does not address one need – size – he does address a number of others.
He can handle the ball. That was a concern last year as well, which led to the February signing of Sam Cassell. The Celtics re-signed Cassell, but he still has yet to play this season. The other point guard options – Eddie House, Gabe Pruitt – are either out-of-position players (House) or still raw around the edges for the playoffs (Pruitt.)
Marbury also can, as they say these days, score the ball. Having a reliable scorer in the second unit has been a problem for the Celtics all season. One night Tony Allen looks like he’ll be the guy. The next night he looks the guy who the Celtics refused to extend last summer and whose mere presence on the court last spring inspired dread and fear in Celtics fans.
Marbury also would be insurance if one of the guards got hurt. (The Celtics’ three guard-small forward starters have yet to miss a game this season.) Plus, if he did come in and play well, the Celtics could consider him down the road, as one of the issues on the horizon is that Ray Allen’s deal expires after the 2009-10 season. While Marbury and Allen were taken in the same draft (1996), and, in fact, traded for each other that day, Marbury is two years younger.
The behavior question is really moot. Think Randy Moss and the New England Patriots. The Celtics have a strong locker room and there is no way that Danny Ainge would foist Marbury on his coach or his team without running it by all of them. Ainge likes to think outside the box – remember his pursuit of Reggie Miller in 2007? – and Kevin Garnett, a former Marbury teammate, would have to agree to be in the ‘let bygones be bygones’ mood. I mean, Marbury broke up a promising Timberwolves team by demanding a trade – in March of 1999. Isn’t there a statute of limitations on that?
And while Marbury’s track record is suspect – the teams he leaves tend to get better – this is different. He would not be the focal point, but a role player. He would in all likelihood get his opportunities in the playoffs, as Brown and Cassell did, but he’s still going to be backing up Rajon Rondo. That’s a given. If Marbury wants to start and play big minutes, then Boston isn’t an option.
You have to believe this is going to be resolved. The Celtics and Cassell waited until late February last season, but part of the holdup was the usual oafish brinksmanship from the Clippers. This time, it’s the team (New York) that is initiating the dialogue and desirous of a divorce. But it’s also a team which has shown no inclination to simply waive Marbury. For New York, it would be preferable to let Marbury calcify and then bid adieu at season’s end (assuming, of course, that there is no trade.)
In the end, this one seems to be falling on Marbury. Clearly, he knows his Knicks days are over. He knows there is interest from the defending NBA champions, a team which can use him to try to repeat. What on earth is he waiting for? The Thunder?
It would be hard to find a more unsympathetic fellow these days than Stephon Marbury. OK, maybe Plaxico Burress.
But in the NBA, the Knicks’ once and no longer future point guard has become the symbol of selfishness as he awaits the dissolution of his relationship with the team. That could come as early as Monday, when Marbury, Knicks basketball boss Donnie Walsh, and a lawyer from the players association are scheduled to meet to see how much of Marbury’s $21.9 million the player is willing to sacrifice to get his release.
No one really looks good in all this. Once the Knicks announced that Mike D’Antoni was going to be the new head coach, Marbury, in essence, became a Dead Steph Walking. He did play in the exhibition season – he had 14 points in 29 minutes against the Celtics in Boston - but once the bell rung on the 2008-09 season, Marbury turned into Mr. Inactive. The next minute he plays will be the first this season.
By all accounts, he is healthy to play. By all accounts, the Knicks have decided they don’t care; they want him gone. So, apparently, do Marbury’s teammates, none of whom has come out and said that the self-proclaimed best point guard in the NBA is getting the proverbial shaft.
But when push came to shove last week, after two trades decimated the New York roster, D’Antoni said he asked Marbury to play against the Pistons simply as a manpower issue. According to the Knicks, Marbury declined, which led the Knicks to fine Marbury $400,000, a fine that is being appealed. (Marbury has a somewhat different interpretation, but he remained on the bench nonetheless.)
With the benefit of hindsight, always helpful, the Knicks allowed this thing to become a daily distraction when they easily could have resorted to a number of maneuvers while still having the same outcome: no Marbury. But by having him sit on the bench during games, travel with the team, and then be in a position to diss the coach, the Knicks more of less invited this to happen. How could it have been avoided? Here are two ways.
1. The Jamaal Tinsley Approach: The Indiana Pacers, Walsh’s previous employer, haven’t done a whole lot right these past few years, but they have drawn a line in the sand with their own point guard, who, like Marbury, is persona non grata. Tinsley has yet to play this season as well and, like Marbury, is healthy. But that’s where the similiarities end. The Pacers announced in September that they were not buying Tinsley out, that they were going to try and trade him (two months later, nada on that front) and that he is free to work out by himself, apart from the team. He has not been with the team all year. (Barack Obama spent more time in Indianapolis in October than Tinsley did.) But ‘out of sight, out of mind’ has its advantages, one of them being that the player can’t refuse to enter a game at which he isn’t even present or in uniform. Had the Knicks chosen this route with Marbury, they at least would have been spared the daily Steph queries from the New York press and would have avoided the Detroit incident. Who knows, they might even have found a taker for him by now.
2. The Frank Brickowski Approach: Here’s a blast from the past, but an instructive one nonetheless. If you don’t want a guy around, tell him to leave. Period. This is what happened with Brickowski during the 1996-97 season when he ended a long and occasionally productive career – 731 games over 12 seasons with six teams – as a member of the Boston Celtics. At that point in time, ML Carr was running the Celtics and he was determined to steer them to the league’s worst record and the best statistical shot at Tim Duncan in the lottery. He pretty much succeeded; the Ping Pong balls just didn’t deliver. One of the many personnel moves Carr made that season was to send Brickowski packing after only 17 games and 255 minutes of action. The official bulletin from the team said that Brickowski was sidelined with a sore right shoulder necessitating an operation, but no one really believed it. The command from on high to Brickowski was take the year off and chill. So that’s what Brickowski did, often times spotted on Cape Cod, not to be confused with the local physical therapy office. He was a free agent signee and was promptly renounced the following July. But the goal was to get him away - and it was a rousing success.
The lessons from the above two scenarios cut right to the core of the Knicks’ situation with Marbury: if you don’t want the guy around, don’t have the guy around. Let him go to Vegas if he so desires; he won’t care as long as the checks are still good. He will still be a name, if not a face, on the roster. And the team can do what it wanted to do anyway, namely, start developing the other players without a guy (a) you don’t want around and (b) is going to be gone for good next year anyway. And it’s not exactly like the Knicks are, you know, trying to win games now. They’re fixated on 2010.
There’s no real trade value for Marbury, not now anyway. Had the Knicks played him and let others see what’s left, maybe they might have been able to do something. Marbury does possess one of the truly valued commodities in the league: the ever-in-demand expiring contract. But with a divorce on the horizon, no one is going to take on Marbury’s contract now. Many teams wouldn’t take on Marbury at any cost, which is probably going to be evident when he does extricate himself from his current situation and becomes a free agent. His track record just isn’t all that overwhelming.
In choosing to defy his coach and team, Marbury put his own stamp on this regrettable saga, one that, unfortunately for him, confirmed what many have long suspected about him. But the Knicks never should have let it get to that point. They knew long ago that Marbury wasn’t going to be a part of their plans. Why they allowed him to stick around and still be seen and heard - instead of in exile – remains a head-scratcher to this day.
If the NBA is, indeed, a players’ league, then the New York Knicks’ front-office transformation this year will amount – to coin a phrase – to putting lipstick on a pig.
Basketball operations boss Donnie Walsh is universally well-respected. New coach Mike D’Antoni is universally well-respected. They are the lipstick – and the rouge, blush, mascara and everything else new and attractive about the Knicks. Neither, however, will play a minute for this year’s Knicks who, on paper, look an awful lot like last year’s train wreck.
A quick scan of the Knicks’ roster the week before training camps opens reveals only three departures from last season’s unremarkable and hapless cabal on 33rd and 8th Avenue: Freddie Jones (an unsigned free agent), Randolph Morris (a free agent signed by Atlanta) and Renaldo Balkman (a 2006 first rounder – taken one pick before Rajon Rondo – traded to Denver for a 2010 second –rounder.) Doesn’t exactly look like a house-cleaning, does it? In their places are free agent Chris Duhon, lottery pick Danilo Gallinari and Patrick Ewing, um, Jr.
So how good can the new-look Knicks be when virtually all of the old-look Knicks will still be around? Well, that voice of gravitas, Shaquille O’Neal, weighed in last week and said D’Antoni alone could result in 15 more wins for the 23-win juggernaut of a year ago. Then again, Shaq was also the one who offered that Kevin Garnett was not a legitimate MVP candidate last year and added that KG didn’t play any defense.
We know this much. As a coach, D’Antoni historically is probably somewhere in between Hall of Famer Larry Brown, who won 23 games in 2005-06, and franchise destroyer Isiah Thomas, who won 33 games in 2006-07 and, after being given an extension, won 23 games in 2007-08 with the league’s most underachieving and overpaid roster. So would 35-40 wins would be a realistic goal?
The 2008-09 Knicks will test the long-held theory that a coach in the NBA can make only so much difference. There will be a different style, for sure, and there will be an air of stability and possibly even tranquility that was absent (and unimaginable) a year ago. But unless there is a roster overhaul, it really is lipstick on a pig.
But, Knicks fans, have patience. (I know, that’s been the operative phrase for a while, but now it really means something.) Walsh and D’Antoni don’t really care a whole lot about this season, at least in terms of the Grand Vision. They’re better off in the short run making incremental progress while assembling low-salaried assets so that they can have a decent roster and a low payroll in the summer of 2010.
That is not only when payroll anchors Stephon Marbury (who could be – gulp – the second highest paid player in the NBA this season), Malik Rose, Jerome James (who still has a picture of Thomas over his bed) and Quentin Richardson will all be off the books. (Marbury, mercifully, comes off after this season, when he presumably will move to Salerno. The others will be off after the 2009-10 season).
That also is the summer that LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all could become free agents. New York is New York. D’Antoni is a renowned players’ coach. The Cavs, Heat and maybe the Raptors will be going nowhere. You already know this story. But, for now, it is only a story, even though there are fewer people who actually knew the identity of Sarah Palin a month ago than who think James will be a lifelong Cav. He’s a Yankees fan. One of his buddies is Nets’ minority owner Jay-Z.
So look for 2008-09 to be your basic weed-out season, sort of like “running a lice comb through the budget process,” to quote ‘The West Wing’s CJ Cregg. With many of the big-salaried players near the end of their contracts, Walsh might find some takers who actually might desire ‘So and So and His Expiring Contract.’ Marbury would fall into that category if anyone actually wanted him.
Until then, try to imagine Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry playing in D’Antoni’s free-flow offense. Not an easy thing to do. At the other end, however, they’ll thrive in D’Antoni’s ‘Let The Opposition Wear Themselves Out Scoring’ defense. There will be a lot of interest in Gallinari and even in newcomer Duhon, a somewhat curious offseason signing given the number of guards, big and small, on the roster.
But what there is now in New York, undeniably, is hope. Walsh has a proven track record and is anxious to rebuild the team. In D’Antoni, he has a coach who loves offense, is easy on his players, and also can be viewed as a valuable recruiting tool. But hope is not a short-term thing. It’s a long-term thing. It isn’t going to be vocalized or used as any kind of sales pitch (Come See The Knicks: Back on the Way to Being Relevant!) because that’s bad form. Season ticket holders are paying too much money to have that message drilled into their heads, even if they’re smart enough to know. Which they are.
Instead, look for messages of “change” – there’s a concept! – and some form of restoration of dignity and respect around the league. That’s a big and important step. At this time last year, the Knicks and Madison Square Garden were a public relations disaster and a league laughingstock – and that was before the basketball team even played a game. Mercifully, those days are gone.
But with the roster still pretty much intact – and, apparently, not a lot of takers out there – it’s going to take time for the team to be competitive and back in the water-cooler dialogue again. Walsh and D’Antoni are a start. But the rest of the group doesn’t look all that promising, at least not for 2008-09.
The NBA a players’ league? The Knicks sure hope not.
Hoopshype.com readers may recall a recent column I wrote on Stephon Marbury, in which I basically called out the Knicks for the way they’ve handled this rather noxious situation this season. The story also contained the following: “Many teams wouldn’t take on Marbury at any cost, which is probably going to be evident when he does extricate himself from his current situation and becomes a free agent. His track record just isn’t all that overwhelming.”
