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nixluva
Posts: 56258
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Joined: 10/5/2004
Member: #758
USA
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One is a Newsday Article:
August 23, 2006
Shaquille O'Neal said Stephon Marbury should let his play speak for itself and speculated that the Knicks' point guard would have been better off playing another season for Larry Brown.
"If you say you're the best point guard in the world, now you have to come out and show that every night," O'Neal said on SportsNet New York. "The only time when I really say that is when I have a real big game. You never really heard me say I'm the best center to ever play the game. When you say that, you have to come out and show that every night, especially here in New York."
When asked before a game against the Nets during the 2004-05 season how he would match up with Jason Kidd, Marbury replied, "I'm the best point guard in the NBA."
O'Neal, in the city with Miami Heat teammate Alonzo Mourning for a charity event, said of Marbury's relationship with Brown, "You have to listen to somebody that's been there.
"If they know and understood that Larry Brown's been there - two years in a row - if you listen to a man like that, then he can take you to the next level," O'Neal said in the interview aired Monday.
Commenting on Brown's messy departure from the Knicks, Mourning said: "I don't like the fact where coaches can be made scapegoats ... If you do what the coach asks you to do, you're going to get results. I don't think L.B. was telling them the wrong things ... It was just a matter of how they responded to what he was saying or how he said it to them."
O'Neal said Marbury and his teammates would've been better off had Brown not been run off after one season.
"It wasn't until I met Phil [Jackson], and put my ego aside, and listened to what he had to say and understood it," O'Neal said. "So I think if those guys would have listened and had paid attention and understood, then they would have been better off."
I'm not sure which other article you were refering to, but this is one that popped up in my Insider list:
$135 Million Buys You a Boeing 767 or One Year of New York Knicks Losses: The New York Knickerbockers will have a payroll of around $135 million in the 2006-07 NBA season, approaching the Yankees' current $194 million for highest payroll ever in team sports. The Knicks' 2006-07 payroll will be more than double the NBA's salary cap. (The NFL salary cap is a hard cap that can be fudged only in minor ways; the NBA salary cap is a soft cap that means nothing so long as a club is willing to pay penalties to the league, as the rolling-in-dough Knicks are.) And at $135 million, the Knicks are likely to be a terrible team!
Would you rather have one of these or the current New York Knicks roster? Hint: Think resale value.
One reason the Knicks' player expenses are so high is the team's February 2006 acquisition of guard Steve Francis, who makes around $15 million annually. The Orlando Magic traded Francis, a three-time All-Star performer but a player with a bad reputation, to New York for a benchwarmer you've never heard of and a player Orlando immediately waived. That is, Orlando sent Francis to New York solely to get his guaranteed contract off the team's books. The week before, Detroit traded Darko Milicic, not long ago the second pick in the NBA draft, to Orlando for reserve Kelvin Cato; the point of the trade was to get Milicic's guaranteed contract off Detroit's books. By contemporary NBA standards, you're much better off with nothing than with an expensive failure like Milicic or a selfish gunner like Francis. Fans might want to look at the Knicks City Dancers but certainly not at the Knicks.
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8/24/2006 1:18 PM
