Point Guard Has Become 'Overpriced Headache'
By STEVE ASCHBURNER
AOL
Sports Commentary

Funny, isn't it, how nobody cries for Stephon Marbury as he makes his way around the NBA this season?


More Trouble in Big Apple

Nathaniel S. Butler, NBAE/Getty
Stephon Marbury is well on his way to burning bridges in another city, this time on the biggest stage of all in New York.
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Every bit as ringless as his old buddy Kevin Garnett and nearly as senior in status - Marbury is in his 11th professional season, drafted by Minnesota one year after Garnett - the New York Knicks ' point guard largely is a target of derision rather than a player viewed with sympathy for his inability to win big.

The difference is mostly one of blame: Garnett ultimately doesn't take the heat for the Timberwolves ' repeated playoff failings over the years, while Marbury gets blamed for pretty much everything that goes wrong with the Knicks these days. Not to mention transit slowdowns, Derek Jeter getting jobbed out of the AL MVP award, the scarcity of PS3 and anything that might be clogging Mayor Bloomberg's desk this week.

Then there are the other NBA clubs who still feel burned by the kid from Coney Island: The Suns while he was there (2001-04), the Nets before that (1999-2001) and the Timberwolves ever since Marbury forced a trade to New Jersey in March 1999.

Curiously, fans in Minnesota, up to and including Garnett, are the only ones who feel wronged by Marbury for leaving rather than staying. They saw in him potential and promise; everyone else has suffered from their Steph infections with the ultra-confidence playmaker at or nearly at the peak of his basketball powers.

And unlike Wolves fans, they hardly could - or now, at Madison Square Garden, hardly can - wait for him to go.

The numbers that really matter - not Marbury's maximum-contract salary, not his rather formidable but individual scoring (20.2) and assists (8.1) averages prior to 2006-07 - tell the story of the headstrong player's true impact. It's all rather basic: Each team Marbury leaves gets better after he's gone.

Taking the seasons in which the point guard played all or part of the year with each club, Minnesota (110-104, .514) was OK, New Jersey (73-141, .341) was horrible and Phoenix (109-137, .443) was mediocre at best.


A Legacy of Losing

Cumulative record of teams Marbury has played on during 11-year career

164-82
Combined record of Timberwolves, Nets, Suns in season after Marbury left

4-14
Record of Marbury's teams in playoffs

0
Total playoff series won by Marbury


Source: NBA.com
Now look at each team's record in its first full, post-Stephon season: Minnesota went 50-32 (.610), New Jersey got to the Finals after a 52-30 finish (.634) and Phoenix was reborn with the anti-Marbury, Steve Nash , at the point, going 62-20 (.756).

New York ? Given the pattern, coach Isiah Thomas and the Knicks cannot unload Marbury fast enough, if they want to resurrect what basketball used to mean at the Garden.

What the league's grandest stage has now, unfortunately, is soap opera and lurid Hollywood-insider coverage. Thomas and Marbury have the beat reporters running back and forth between them as if they're divorce attorneys for Britney and K-Fed.

It's "he said, he said" at its most breathless and insufferable: Are they talking today? Did they meet yesterday? Why was Steph benched? Did Zeke notice the towel-over-the-head pout? Might they hash it out again tomorrow? And on and on.

And to think, people actually expected this to be a more peaceful season with Larry Brown gone and Thomas, long assumed to be Marbury's sponsor, in charge.

Yet in the span of a week, all of this childishness unfolded in and around the Knicks, a team that does have some talent, ought to win more regularly and doesn't deserve these sorts of distractions:

- Marbury took it upon himself to show his coach what his version of a pass-first game really looks like.

- He and Thomas huddled privately and allegedly made up.

- Thomas yanked Steve Francis out of the starting lineup to free up Marbury, except that it made no difference.

- Marbury looked almost insubordinate Saturday against Chicago , taking zero shots.

- More thumbsucking and media-monitoring of the Thomas-Marbury relationship.

- A 2-for-13 shooting performance against the Bulls on Tuesday, with more headlines and hovering by the scribes.

This all is going to end badly, of course. Marbury already has passed to the dark side of the game's untradeables. No longer a franchise guy viewed by his employer as too valuable to trade, Marbury has transformed himself - with help from Brown, Thomas and another half-dozen bridges burned from his past - into an overpriced headache, quite likely in decline as a player, who still is owed way too much money ($42 million over two years after this season) to pique another team's interest.

Truth be told, the number of teams willing to take on Marbury even if the Knicks bought him out or simply released him probably is countable on one hand. But Thomas, as the season chugs along, the screws tighten on his Knicks tenure and the league's trading deadline approaches, figures to try. Mightily.

He might even get lucky, if Pat Riley is in full panic mode in Miami . Or if Minnesota's Kevin McHale makes a desperation move for sheer box office, reuniting the two estranged pals who were the cornerstones of McHale's original plan.

Or Thomas and Marbury might be stuck with each other for however long it takes one to beat the other out the door.