Not that it's unwarranted but, boy, he's just twisting that knife in his back or what?

Wait a second the guy rebels early in the yr bailing on the team but was allowed to come back, not by his teammates, but by his CROOKED coach. He later decides to get season ending surgery, which proved to be necessary, no matter how untimely and suspicious it may have appeared. Now the same CROOKED coach who allowed him to come back from an outright threatening rebellion doesn't want him to attend home games? So really, the reason I SAY UGH allowed him back, he was only concerned with winning games and nothing else. With the odds greatly stacked against I SAY UGH and the team at this point he's now in DISOWN mode with Marbury. I don't know at this point if Marbury has any freeness of speech worth recognizing matched against I SAY UGH alone, but in this case there's a side of me that says I wish Marbury would take I SAY UGH to task in the media and ignore the gag.

[Edited by - TrueBlue on 02-29-2008 09:41 AM]

Posted by BRIGGS:

wait a second i thought two days ago isiah was preaching that the Knicks couldve won 5-6 games more with marbury. at the very minimum--if you look at FA up PG's next year--wouldnt Marbury lead the pack???? it doesnt make sense to alienate him--it shows other players in the league what kind of nonsense we have going on here

Agreed.

The only person who should be gagged at this point is I SAY UGH.

Posted by K22:

I'm sure LB is laughing his ass off right now.

While rolling over in his grave.

Of course I'm disappointed to hear that the Cap'n and his trusty first mate are at odds. However, I'm fully confident that they will work out their problems and be reunited before the ship next sails. They know that for the good of the ship they will have to bury their differences. I feel certain that with Ensign Marbury navigating, and Cap'n Zeke motivating and bringing the best out of the crew, they will get the ship back on course.

I'm glad Isiah is free of Marbury so that Crawford can drive the truck, and Isiah can better concentrate on his feuds with Curry and Randolph.

what the hell does a meaningless MSG gag order have on a guy collecting $20 mil next season guaranteed who's a lame duck anyway, especially to a complete psychopath like Marbury? Isiah is just adding fuel to the fire here... he just needs to bite the bullet cuz this is exactly what he knew he was getting when he traded for the guy to begin with.

If "Keep your mouth closed and we'll take care of you" is a gag order, then I guess Berman got the story half right. Either Steph goes away quietly and gets traded to a good situation or he causes a fuss and gets bought out, begging for teams to sign him. The gag order is believable, the MSG ban is not.

1) If Steph, who's probably the one feeding Berman the info, was really that broken up about not being able to go to the games, he'd just show up anyway. But instead you whine to the Post? The worst that could happen is he's escorted out by security, which would cause an embarrassing scene and pr nightmare for the Knicks who have more to lose than Steph in the court of public opinion. More than likely, he'd just be told to sit in his suite or stay in the locker room like he had been doing before the surgery. The Knicks are stupid but they're not stupid enough to "ban" a guy from a building without officially citing him for "conduct detrimental to the team" and risk complaints from both the league (who's sick of the Knicks mess already) and the union (who'd have a heart attack over the contractual implications).

2) Why ban him from the arena, if you're not going to ban him from practice? If Isiah wanted him away for the good of the team, he'd make sure his treatment was scheduled sometime before or after practice and he'd have long sold the rest of the team on his detrimental behavior, yet Nate and Crawford (Isiah's biggest ally) regularly volunteer that they speak to him regularly.

The gag order makes sense since it's regular MSG policy to levy fines on players for not complying with their media policy and such fines are usually not as scrutinized by the union as long as they aren't excessive.

$21 million worth of cap relief going into '09-'10 is going to be very attractive for a lot of teams, especially when they can trade for him and waive him instantly if he becomes a problem. The fact is there are some teams in desirable situations and then there are others. Steph can end up on a mid-level contender or he can end up on a team muddling in the abyss.

If Steph goes out and embarrasses himself like he's prone to do or has Dolan to the point where he just really can't stand him anymore and goes ahead and buys him out, Steph loses which is why Steph won't agree to one, even at 95% until he feels he has no choice. No one is going to pay him without the incentive of his expiring, not coming off surgery to repair chronically injured ankles, not with his reputation, not with his emotional baggage, not with his declining skill and not for anything above a mid-level, if he's lucky to even get that. Yet if he's healthy and gets traded, he has at least until the Feb. trade deadline to prove he's still got something left and can stfu and be productive.

OTOH, right now, Steph's expiring is working in Isiah's favor. He can sell Dolan on the false dream that the contract is going to bring them a superstar and he can point to the Garnett, Gasol and Shaq deals as examples of teams getting desperate and auctioning off marquee names for cents on the dollar and reason that their asset is far greater than what was needed to pull of those deals. For Dolan, Steph provides a perfect scapegoat/excuse for when he doesn't fire Isiah. Note Isiah bringing up not just Steph's injury, but his "emotional" year. Steph will be Larry Browned as soon as he's traded.

But if Steph keeps pissing Dolan off like he did all summer and leading up to the Phoenix fiasco, he will be bought out. Then the Knicks don't have that asset and Isiah has nothing to sell Dolan on.

[Edited by - nysportsfan11 on 03-01-2008 11:12 AM]