Steph and Steve - Let’s Play
by Tom Kertes

GREENBURGH, NY, February 23, 2006 -- “I felt good enough to play,” a wry Stephon Marbury commented on his return to the Knicks lineup against Miami following Thursday’s practice at the team’s Madison Square Garden Training Center. “But you can stop with all the percentage questions. I am not going to be one hundred per cent healthy this year.”

Ouch.

On a less painful note, the Knicks star point guard has professed himself to be elated to have the newly acquired Steve Francis on board. “I’m almost positive everyone thinks this is going to be a problem,” he smiled. “But I think that when you have two players who may be similar and alike but do different things on the basketball court, that’s a plus.”

“In fact, I don’t understand why this would be a problem at all,” added Marbury. “Whenever you have two guys that create and make plays…Look, we’re both eager to play with each other. When we’ll get on the basketball court we’ll just basically read each other -- it’s a positive when you get a player like Steve Francis. Whenever you get a player such as him you have to take full advantage. By us both being able to make plays, it makes match-ups totally difficult to the other team.“

“Steve is a very competitive player. He can shoot the jumper, he can go to the basket, he can pass, he can pretty much do anything.”

Francis seemed equally perplexed by the avalanche of Marbury analogies, Marbury similarities, and the potential chemistry concerns -- though for different reasons. “I swear, until just now, until I got to New York, I never heard my game compared to Stephon Marbury’s,” he said. “Not once. But, you know what, it’s all good. I think, even though he is a day older, I can be an older brother to him. I can help him to win games.”

“You just go out on the floor, learn about each other, let the vibe flow,” added Francis. “At least at first. You allow the chemistry evolve with time. I’ve played with Cuttino Mobley, another great guard, in Houston and we were ranked as the top back court for years. It wasn’t about him shooting the ball or me shooting the ball. It wasn’t a problem.”

The problem, at least for tomorrow night’s tiff against the Nets, is that Francis -- due to Trevor Ariza’s failure to complete his physical in Orlando -- was not allowed to practice Thursday with the team. “I watched on the sidelines,’’ he said. “I picked up a couple of sets. But I don’t think I’ll be able to do much. To adjust fully, it takes a few games, anyway.”

Coach Larry Brown begged to differ. “He’s starting tomorrow night,” he said. “Steve is going to be a full time starter. We may have to limit some of the things we do, but we’ll just throw him out there. We did the same thing with Jalen (Rose) and he had his best game in the first game.”

Brown, and President, Basketball Operations Isiah Thomas, spent the entire day on the telephone but no other trades were completed. “We tried to touch base with a lot of people, first on the East Coast then on West Coast,” said Thomas. “But nothing developed that we were comfortable with.” “We tried,” said Brown. “But I’m not disappointed -- if we would have had something done, it would have meant parting with a lot of our future.”

“Almost every call we took, one of our young guys were mentioned,” said Thomas. “Sure, they have had some great moments and some not so great moments, so far. But the talk around the league is that the other GMs really value our young guys.”

“And so do we.”

“When I first came here, the average age of the roster was over 30 and people were saying we had players nobody wanted,” said Thomas. “The good thing that has come out of this process is that you can look at every player on the roster and say he has value. The average age is about 25 now and we have players a lot of teams want.”

“I know one thing,” said Thomas. “Coach and I, we’re in it for the long haul and we’re fighting like heck to win. And we don’t mind talking some hits on the way if in the end we come up on the winning side.”