I've been saying this for a while, but I think it will be very interesting to see how Marbury plays now that he finally has a legit second scorer to play with. It's been almost 2 years since he's had one. He had one in Van Horn for a few games when he first joined the Knicks, and the team played extremely well. He had one in Tim Thomas for the 2nd half of his first year here (Timmy was getting a legit 15-16 pts per game for that stretch) and the team was able to play well enough to sneak into the playoffs.

Since then, we all know what happened with Tim Thomas last year. He never really got going and gave us nothing for half the year The 2nd scorer on the team became Jamal Crawford, who has been far too erratic to be dependable, and the play of the team and Marbury to some extent has suffered. Early this year, Eddy Curry was added to that equation, but he was injured early and has been painfully erratic as well.

To some extent this has been the case throughout his career. He played effectively very early in his career with a young KG and a pretty decent player in Tom Gugliotta. He struggled in Jersey, but was still a young player, and suffered from having a supporting cast that was always injured (KVH, Kendall Gill, Kerry Kittles and even Kenyon Martin's first year). The one year that he and KVH stayed healthy, the rest of the supporting cast on that team was pretty dreadful. When he moved to Phoenix he suffered through coaching changes in his first year, but began to reclaim some success with Marion and Amare, even going to the playoffs and giving the Spurs a challenge. His next season there was derailed by the early injury of Amare Stoudemire. The Suns had a bad start and he was shipped to NY, which had a bad start as well, but played .500 ball with Marbury.

Now that he doesn't have to be shoot first (which I never thought was fair with him, b/c he has been by far the best scorer on the team, and it just didn't make sense for him to defer at times if we wanted to win ballgames), its possible that we'll see him as the playmaker he was when he first got here. I hate to make excuses for the guy...a player with his kind of talent should have seen more success in his career. And everyone argues that a PG should lift the level of play from his supporting cast. But he's always seemed to have the "curse" of being the most gifted scorer (as well as distributor) on his team and he has had to score to be competitive. Yet he's always racked up assists in spite of that.

Francis' style may not be the most conducive to play with Steph, but I'm anxious to see what happens now that there is someone else who can consistently carry the team on offense. (and we also seem to have a nice third option in Rose now as well).

[Edited by - VDesai on 02-23-2006 08:50 AM]

Good read....positive outlook.

Francis and Marbs to me should just be allowed to just play. They need to bond out there and root for each other. Communicate and just make the rest of the guys catch up to what they are doing.

I love to attack and if I was the coach I would have a walking hard-on watching Marbs and Francis attack and attack the rim.

Frye has two guys that can work the pick and roll....and Curry has two guys that can just drop it off to him all day.

Rose to me is the "X" factor to me cuz he can be like the glue.....Rose could really be the real point guard in the starting five.

I'm excited....I'm not even trying to hear the haters out there.

I neede this positve outlook because, I really don't feel good about the diraction of this team right now. We def need to move Craw or Q but who in there right minds are gonna take them off our hands?

Posted by bigbeast:

I neede this positve outlook because, I really don't feel good about the diraction of this team right now. We def need to move Craw or Q but who in there right minds are gonna take them off our hands?

I'm sick of the hate....why do so many people wanna dog the Knicks....is it just because they are in NY? It's just crazy. It's draining.

I feel you on the trading Craw or Q stuff. It's just too much guards....Q seems like he's back and Brown seems to believe in him. I think Craw is the dead man walking....

Question is though.....where do we go from here? Craw kinda needs to be dealt for cap relief......Francis just kills his playing time.....either Craw or Q has to go.

Too late, Ruben was aprt of the Seattle, Denver, Portland trade.

It's not even about a postive/negative outlook this point. I've never been one of the "rah-rah" guys or I love Isiah guys. What I see with this trade is a talent upgrade, and a chance to add something to the team we didn't have before...someone who can score as consistently as Marbury, and who can present an alternate scoring option to Marbury that has at least close to equivalent ability.

Like I said, their styles may not mesh, and it may not work, but there is some potential here. We've got 30 games to try it out. Can't worry about missing the playoffs, draft positions or anything like that because they do not apply. So just root for it to work and root for the team to win.

Think positive. Don't worry, be happy.