I guess these reporters are really bored. I just think this is a terrible article and pure speculation, or I really enjoy the kool aid!!!

With a few jabs after 0-3 start, Brown vs. Marbury is on
By Chris Sheridan
ESPN Insider
Archive

NEW YORK -- Act II of Larry Brown vs. Stephon Marbury has begun, not with a haymaker but with an exchange of jabs.

The Knicks dropped to 0-3 Sunday with an 83-81 home loss to the Golden State Warriors as Brown made like a mad professor with his rotation experiments, giving extensive minutes to rookies David Lee, Nate Robinson and Channing Frye while benching Eddy Curry for the entire fourth quarter.

"This is kind of an audition, trying to define a mentality of how I think we should play," Brown said afterward. "When you don't have to coach effort, it's a big step."

But as Brown tries to separate the lemmings from the laggards, he's running the risk of leading the team too far off a cliff while sacrificing a huge segment of the schedule. Brown said it could "very easily" be at least 20 games before he settles on a set rotation, which doesn't bode well for a roster about to start pressing for that elusive first victory.

Marbury couldn't help himself from knocking the willy-nilly nature of Brown's substitution patterns, which haven't really been patterns at all, in losses to Boston, Washington and Golden State.

"Consistency is always the best teacher," Marbury said. "I guess coach does stuff differently."

On Sunday, Brown had used 11 of his 12 players by the midpoint of the fourth quarter, getting an especially strong performance from Lee in his NBA debut as the three rookies kept the Knicks in the game. But when Lee was winded and needed to go to the bench with 5:46 remaining and the Knicks ahead 74-71, Brown replaced him with the only member of the team who hadn't yet played, Malik Rose. (Maurice Taylor wasn't an option. After taking four charges in the Knicks' first two games, Taylor was placed on the inactive list prior to Sunday's tipoff.)

Golden State went on a 7-0 run before Brown reinserted Lee for Rose, and the Warriors led 80-75 with 53 seconds remaining when Robinson returned.

Seconds later, the 5-foot-7 rookie had the ball swiped from him near midcourt by Baron Davis (Robinson claimed Davis fouled him), ending the Knicks' final chance.

"I felt bad for Nate," Brown said. "That last turnover, he shouldn't have been in that position. We pick up the dribble and throw it to him ..."

Let the record show that it was Marbury, who did not get along with Brown when the two were paired on the 2004 Olympic team, who picked up his dribble and passed the ball to the Robinson.

Which means that fateful turnover was actually Marbury's fault, Brown seemed to be saying.

After falling behind 74-73 with 4:35 remaining, the Knicks' next six shots were jumpers, all of which missed. Through it all, Curry sat and watched. If he was simmering afterward, he wouldn't let it show. Curry refused to take the reporters' bait, striving not to say anything negative despite being benched for the final 15:16.

"With coach Brown things are liable to change at any moment. You never really know," Curry said. "If you're not playing hard or he feels you're not doing the right thing, he's going to get you out. It's ultimately up to him to decide who he wants in the game."

Said Marbury: "Whenever you've got an inside presence, it makes the game extremely easy."

Golden State coach Mike Montgomery also was surprised that Curry sat. Curry had been nearly impossible for the Warriors to contain in the early going, and Montgomery held Adonal Foyle out for much of the second half awaiting the return that never came.

"Larry knows his team and he knows where he has to go and what he has to do, and I'm sure he's got all the right reasons for doing what he did," Montgomery said diplomatically.

Maybe Brown does know what he has to do, but whatever he's doing now is not producing positive results. Three games into the Brown era, Quentin Richardson is shooting 34 percent; Jamal Crawford is at 29 percent; Jerome James has 10 fouls, two points and four rebounds; and Marbury is averaging just 15 points while shooting 41 percent.

The Knicks now head out on a grueling six-game Western Conference road trip that could leave them 0-9 by the time they return to Madison Square Garden in two weeks.

Surely that wasn't what owner James Dolan had in mind when he brought Brown aboard.

But with Brown, no matter where he's coaching, there's always the likelihood that things will get worse before they get better. In New York, they're learning that now the hard way.

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