Posted by Michael6835:

What's his career numbers ?

Hard to evaluate the beginning of the season, the whole team sucked for 3 months.

How did he finish the season ?
Did he not play defense (the big critism) ?
Did he not defer and play team ball ?
Did he not take over games when he needed too ?

His off court antics aside, the dude can ball. So let's not attack him on the court for his lack of intelligence off the court.

Posted by Michael6835:

i agree he does need to STFU and play, the player and media person are two totally different people.

• It was a sideways glance, but I noticed Jerome James has a waistline. And he’s injury free so far.

GREENBURGH, N.Y., Oct. 1 — An off-season of legal entanglements, humiliating headlines and other collected oddities has spilled into a new Knicks season. But Stephon Marbury has four words to make it all go away.

“It shall be well,” Marbury said Monday afternoon at the team’s annual media day.

Marbury repeated the phrase — the meaning of which he declined to state — throughout his session with reporters at the Knicks’ training center. His point, other than avoiding sensitive issues, seemed to be that the Knicks will be fine when the balls hit the court Tuesday morning at training camp in Charleston, S.C.

Yet as Marbury and his teammates spoke, their coach was sitting in a federal courthouse, waiting for a jury to decide whether he sexually harassed a former team executive. Those deliberations will continue Tuesday morning, which means that Isiah Thomas, the Knicks’ coach and president, will miss the team’s first practice.

The seven-person jury appeared to be favoring the plaintiff, Anucha Browne Sanders, when court recessed Monday, which means there is probably worse news to come for the franchise.

All of the Knicks’ players stepped carefully around the trial Monday, talking about it only in the abstract, as if it were occurring in a parallel universe. It was much more personal for Marbury, however.

Marbury was the only player to take the witness stand, where he admitted to having sex with a former team intern, and to directing profane and demeaning insults toward Browne Sanders, the Knicks’ former senior vice president for marketing.

Marbury, who is married, had not addressed his role in the case until Monday. He responded to dozens of questions but shared little, at one point saying, “I’m not obligated to tell you anything.” He offered no apologies, no remorse and no reassurance to fans.

Asked how the court proceedings affected him, Marbury said, “It shall be well.” Asked what that meant, he said, “Whatever you want to interpret it to be, that’s what it is.”

In the past year, Marbury has engendered considerable good will by starting a line of low-cost athletic apparel, and by making significant charitable donations. He has also spoken openly of his faith, words that clashed with his role in the Thomas trial.

But he spent this past summer making a number of cryptic and odd statements about his personal and professional life.

Asked what he would say to fans, Marbury said, “It shall be well.”

“I don’t have to say nothing else,” he said. “People that know me, people that support me, that buy my shoes, the people that know who I am, they know that.”

Marbury said he had not experienced “any negative fallout” from the trial, and when asked if he had to make amends with anyone in his inner circle, he said, once more, “It shall be well.”

It seemed to be Marbury’s belief, and the franchise’s hope, that a new season would eventually force a change of subject.

“We’re talking about a civil lawsuit,” Marbury said. “Somebody’s trying to make some money, and we’re talking about basketball.”

The news on the basketball court may provide some measure of relief, from both the trial and from last season’s dismal 33-49 campaign. Center Eddy Curry, who had a promising season, said he was 20 pounds lighter — and proportionally quicker. Forward Zach Randolph, who averaged 23.6 points and 10.1 rebounds for Portland last season, is now playing next to Curry, forming perhaps the most powerful low-post tandem in the league.

And the players whose injuries sank the Knicks last spring — Jamal Crawford (right ankle surgery), David Lee (right leg stress injury) and Quentin Richardson (back surgery) — said they were back to full strength. Indeed, Crawford is better than that, having added another 15 pounds of upper-body muscle to help absorb contact on the way to the rim.

No one seemed more eager to get the season started than Curry. In late July, Curry and his wife were robbed at gunpoint in their suburban Chicago mansion.

“The scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my life,” Curry said, speaking about the incident for the first time. “Guns in your face, guns in your chest, guns in your back. People screaming at you, cussing at you, ordering you around, cursing at your wife, guns on her. It’s crazy.”

The incident prompted Curry and his family to return to New York almost immediately, which Curry said was beneficial to his game. He ended up spending more time at the Knicks’ training center, and losing the most weight since he turned pro in 2001.

Curry declined to list his weight but said that his performance in strength and quickness tests, when compared with this time last year, “were just night and day.”

At the time that players spoke, there was no news from the courthouse. The team delayed its flight to Charleston in the hope that Thomas might make it. Players shrugged off the potential impact of Thomas’s missing a practice or two. But the stain of the trial is not likely to soon fade.

“This,” Curry said of the new season, “is our escape.”

Posted by Bippity10:

Marb's head looks smaller