The Sideshow
What happened to the pride of Coney Island?

By Tommy Craggs
Published Nov 18, 2007

Weeks before his coach benched him and his organization scapegoated him, before he deserted his team in Phoenix, I watched as Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury, sitting on a bed in a Charleston, South Carolina, hotel, demonstrated how he stays closer to God.


“I go like this,” Marbury said. He began weaving his hands in and out, rolling his shoulders, and casting his eyes skyward.


His assistant, Gaylord, chimed in. “Givin’ your praise to the Almighty Lord,” he said.


“That’s it,” Marbury said.


“That’s what it’s all about.”


“That’s how we live our lives.”


It was the eve of the first day of Knicks training camp. Marbury was registered at the hotel as “JCIMS.” The initials stand for “Jesus Christ Is My Savior,” which contrasted with the self-aggrandizing travel monikers Marbury used to give himself, variations on his “Starbury” nickname. He seemed genuinely excited about the Knicks and his own rebirth. “This is the most I’ve ever looked forward to playing a season in the NBA, by far,” he said. We spoke for two hours, and Marbury was by turns effusive, defensive, and simply bizarre. We talked about the day this summer he was born again, June 29. We talked about the Bible. “I’m in Genesis,” he said. “I’m reading from the front of the book. Genesis is hot.” He invited me to church with him in Canarsie.


We never made it. Marbury soon told me he was cutting off access because I’d contacted his assistant without his permission. Which seemed backward, of course, but given that he was apparently not really as happy about the Knicks as he indicated, maybe keeping me away was a good idea. Last week, just five games into the Knicks’ season, Marbury heard he was being benched. After confronting coach Isiah Thomas on a plane to Phoenix and allegedly telling teammates he couldn’t be benched because he had dirt on Thomas, Marbury skipped the Suns game. There was immediate speculation that the Knicks would get rid of him somehow, and it continued even as he rejoined the team in L.A. on Wednesday. He’s due to make the league-maximum $42 million through next season—but his skills are in decline, and there’s little chance another team will trade for him. It’s possible the Knicks could buy him out of his contract for a lump sum, which would allow him to sign a new contract with a different club.


The situation was unexpected, even given the Knicks’ turmoil-filled recent history. Marbury was Thomas’s first major acquisition as team president. Bringing the Coney Island product home had earned him instant credibility with Knicks fans, and Thomas stuck with Marbury over the ensuing years of disappointment. The two were further linked during the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual-harassment lawsuit. In testimony, Marbury described an extramarital tryst with an intern outside a strip club, admitted calling Sanders a “bitch,” and then left the courthouse singing.


The case revealed the Knicks to be an organization given over to nepotistic unemployables and the cast of Porky’s, and it appears Marbury is the fall guy. That’s too bad—he doesn’t deserve the blame nearly as much as Thomas and Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan, the very two people whose meeting Sunday night may have led to the decision to bench him.


That isn’t to say Marbury hasn’t gone around the bend. His courthouse performance and deteriorating play were only part of the problem. “I think he’s lost his mind,” says Jeffrey “Slice” Morton, an old friend who lived with Marbury during his rookie year in Minnesota until the two had a falling-out and who now speaks with him only intermittently. “He says he’s seen the light, but people that are saved don’t act the way he acts. I think he’s confused.”


Marbury may be crazy, but he’s no one’s fool. As Morton also observed, in reference to Marbury’s “Coney Island’s Finest” tattoo, “Stephon is gonna do anything in his power to be the finest, manipulating, destroying, conniving—whatever he’s gotta do.” It may be distasteful, it may be incredibly selfish, and it may be conveyed verbally via non sequiturs, but his style does get a certain kind of results. Marbury himself had admitted as much. In the midst of our upbeat Charleston conversation about religion and the new season, he raised the subject of his reputation for selfishness.


“If I didn’t play the way how I played, I wouldn’t have gotten no max contract,” he said. “They can talk about whatever they wanna talk about me, because I got maxed. I’m a max player. Don’t get mad at me, because I’m telling you what’s real. One plus one is two, all day long, and it’s never gonna change. And that’s factorial.”

Posted by BasketballJones:

Another Marbury quotable.

Posted by Nalod:


This guy wanted his own talkshow? Im gonna miss him.

Posted by islesfan:

Can someone please explain why when Marbury got into it with Larry Brown, it was Larry Brown's fault?

Posted by Cosmic:

Posted by islesfan:

Can someone please explain why when Marbury got into it with Larry Brown, it was Larry Brown's fault?

At the time we thought this was a team on the rise. We liked the pieces we had for the most part and figured we were a few additions away from being pretty good.

We hired Larry Brown to coach the squad given to him. We expected Larry to bring them to the next level and fulfill the potential of each player and the team. Instead Larry immediately had his eyes on Isiah's job. The way Larry conducted himself was disgusting. Whether or not he was correct in analyzing that this team would not win as constructed the way he went about things was horrible.

He purposely fought with Marbury before the season even began. Larry had an agenda. That agenda was to seperate the players he wanted gone from the franchise. To do this he purposely started fights with them that would not have existed otherwise. His plan was to show Isiah and Dolan that he could not work with a player who was insubordinate - yet - he had to make SURE such player(s) were viewed as much. He made sure Marbury fought with him, he tried to divide Marbury and Isiah, he tried anything he could to make Dolan believe that Marbury had to go. Now, Larry did this with about 8 players and then eventually tried to do it to Isiah and Isiah's hand picked assistants but that's a whole new extended topic that has no meaning here since we're just talking about Marbury.

Now, whether or not Larry was correct that Marbury was not a winner, NOBODY conducts themselves in such a manner as Brown did and gets his way. You can't and you don't do that. He did, and like the many other feuds he tried to invent to get his way, he got canned for such abhorrent behavior.

THAT IS WHY very few defended Brown on the topic. It's not what Brown knew it's how he went about things that was a disgrace to basketball itself.

In hindsight at the end of the year maybe you fire Isiah and give Brown dual role and right now Marbury would be a Nugget, Andre Miller a Knick, and instead of Zach coming to New York - Eddy Curry would have been sent elsewhere. We'd probably be a better team.

Yet, again, it comes down to a code of conduct and Larry breached it every way imaginable to try to get his way. That, again, is why there was little support for Larry.

Posted by eViL:


I thought Larry was using the media as a motivational device. When players are signed to multi-million dollar guaranteed contracts, one way to motivate is by attacking their pride. You embarrass them into being motivated. Larry is not the only coach who does it. Look at Phil Jackson, Scott Skiles, Bill Parcells, etc. Look at Isiah's recent remarks. There are countless other coaches who do this. The MSG media policy is retarded. I think a coach should be able to dog his players as hard as he wants.