Posted by nixluva:
The "all alone" thing. The "I FEEL that i'm the best PG in the NBA comment, which he was baited into making and then restating by the media, who kept throwing Kidd in his face.
You engage in a lot of self deception regarding Marbury. I remember having to correct your adamant exhortations that Marbury never had issues with teammates, GMs or coaches before here. I can pull up the old thread if you'd like.
Now here you deceive yourself about the "normalcy" of these other proclamations of his. Marbury wasn't baited into anything, before the January 1st 2004 Nest a game he was asked by a TV reporter something along the lines of "Now that your with the knicks and Kidd is with the Nets, who's the best PG in the Metro area." A question Kidd surely had been asked as well, without yielding such a hyperbolic answer.
IMO, Steph's best response would have been humility, but barring that, had he just answered something short like, "Me!" with a charasmatic smile the media wouldn't have blinked. Instead he went off an a two day mediathon. Below are quotes combined from his two days of answering a routine question.
"Don't get me wrong -- I love Jason Kidd. He's a great point guard," Marbury said. "(But) how am I comparing myself to him when I think I'm the best point guard to play basketball? That doesn't make any sense. I mean, how can I sit here and compare myself to somebody if I already think I'm the best?
"I'm telling you what it is: I know I'm the best point guard in the NBA. I don't need anybody else to tell me that. When I go on the basketball court, if I think about what you're all saying, I'll lose my mind."
"He's just like me," Marbury said of Kidd at yesterday's morning shootaround before the Nets beat the Knicks, 93-87. "He's a loser. We're both losers. Neither of us have won a championship. Tim Duncan is a winner. Kevin Garnett is a loser just like me. Charles Barkley is a loser just like me. [TNT partner] Kenny Smith is a winner.
"Magic [Johnson], Michael Jordan, [Larry] Bird, those guys are winners. Kobe [Bryant] and Shaquille [O'Neal] are winners. Isiah Thomas is a winner. Until you win championships, we're just like everyone else. It doesn't matter how far you get in the playoffs. It doesn't matter if you get to the Finals. You lost."
Marbury didn't back down from his New Year's boast that he considers himself the "best point guard in basketball."
"I'm just saying reality and answered a question," Marbury said. "I already know I'm the best point guard. It's like asking if it's raining outside. You're going to tell them it's raining."The man clearly went far and beyond saying he "feels" he's the best.
Now why was this ever important to me? Shortly after those quotes Scalabrini from the Nets was aksed about them. Might have even been right after the game, which the Knicks lost. I think his insightful response is most telling:
WFAN interview:
Carlin: A couple of weeks ago Stephon Marbury makes the comment that he feels like he's the best point guard in the league. When the Nets hear something like that, and you have Jason Kidd on the team, are their any raised eyebrows going around?
Scalabrine: [i]OK here's the difference. When Steph makes that comment, I dont know, I mean I'm not in the locker room, but I don't know if the Knicks have his back. But when Steph makes that comment about Jason, we were like "we are not losing this game against the Knicks, we can't let this happen." We have Jason's back and Jason has our back. [/b]And I think you know Steph is a very good player, you know he's very talented. But you know I'd run through a wall for Jason and Jason would run through a wall for us. That pretty much shows that he's the best point guard. When you have a guy like that and you'll do anything for him and he'll do anything for you that pretty much sums up the best point guard ever. Up until those comments the Knicks had a .500 record and were in the midst of a 3 game win streak. Those comments commenced a 2-16 plummet, the worst in franchise history. Probably because, unlike Kidd in NJ, Marbury's teammates decidedly did NOT have his back.
Obviously those comments alone were not enough to knock the knees out from under the team, they were simply the straw of discontent that broke the team's back.
Marbury has been poisonous to all his teams and those with connections to basketball, like many in the media, know this all too well. You, though, never will.
10/10/2007 1:49 AM
