To begin turnaround, Knicks should trade Marbury
New York Daily News
April 21, 2005


NEW YORK - You can actually turn it around in the NBA. You can go from bad to good, lottery to playoffs and laughingstock to serious contender, and it doesn't take 365 years to do the trick, despite what might be going on at the Garden these days.

You can do it in a mere 365 days.

"We've had five teams all have a 15-win improvement from last year - Phoenix, Washington, Miami, Seattle and Chicago," NBA VP Stu Jackson said the other day. "And that's the biggest number of teams we've had who've done that since 1997-98."

For turnarounds to happen, it takes bold trades (see Miami and Shaquille O'Neal); shrewd salary-cap moves (see Phoenix); great drafts (see Chicago); old-fashioned patience (see Seattle and Washington) and smart free-agent signings (see Phoenix and Steve Nash).

When you see how those five teams have flourished - four were lottery teams last season but will be in the playoffs starting Saturday - and consider that the Heat and Suns might meet in the 2005 Finals, you have to ask, why can't there be a similar turnaround for the Knicks? Well, there can be. But it would have to start with Isiah Thomas trading Stephon Marbury.

Thomas tied his regime to Marbury 15 months ago and considers Marbury untradeable. But Marbury is not leading this team back to prominence, perhaps not even back to a winning record.

There are other roster moves that have to be made. But if there's ever going to be a turnaround in New York, it has to start with Marbury. Not moving from point guard to shooting guard, but moving on, to a fifth team where he could perhaps enjoy success as the No. 2 man to a dominant star, or playing for a taskmaster-type coach.

There's a very simple reason why Thomas has to do an about-face: With Marbury miscast as a leader, it's just not working. If it was, the Knicks wouldn't be going to the lottery with 33 wins.

Perhaps the Hawks, looking for local interest to fill their arena, would take a chance on a Georgia Tech name. Maybe Toronto would look to recover from its Vince Carter debacle and roll the dice on Marbury. There's always a chance that if Flip Saunders gets the Portland coaching job, he would welcome his former Minnesota playmaker to Blazer-land.

All it takes is one desperate team willing to take a gamble, just as Thomas did in making his signature move. He'll probably scoff at the idea Thursday when he gives his 500th State of the Knicks talk this season. But given the way Garden CEO Jim Dolan has this team on a course set for basketball oblivion, Thomas should make the move.

Salary cap be damned, Dolan will have the Knicks try to spend their way out of this losing cycle, regardless of the fact that no team has ever used his blueprint to get things turned around. Here's how bad it is at the Garden: If the Knicks have another losing season next year, it will mark the first time since the franchise's Dark Ages, the early-to-mid 1960s, that they will have gone five straight years without playing at least .500 basketball. As long as the history book is open, you have to go back 32 years to find a championship season.

But forget about an NBA championship, as you probably did long ago. Based off what we've seen, they won't even win an Atlantic Division championship with Marbury.

When the Knicks were put of their misery last night against the Wizards, three teams were ahead of them in the division, making a mockery out of another one of Marbury's insightful comments.


This season," Marbury boasted to the Nets bench during the preseason opener, "the division is ours!"

It was for about two months, then things reverted to form for Marbury. In his nine pro seasons, his teams have finished with losing records seven times. He's never won more than 45 games. Regardless of his talent, that's an incredibly damning track record.

Isiah Thomas doesn't have much of a record himself since coming to the Garden. He has assembled a roster of me-first guards and small backup power forwards, with salaries climbing to a league-record $110 million next season. But it all starts with his playmaker, who should be easier to trade at this point than any of his other big-contract players (Allan Houston, Tim Thomas and Penny Hardaway).

Isiah Thomas has told confidants that he believes he has another year to produce some results. With that in mind, this has to be the summer when he begins the long-awaited turnaround.

Trading Stephon Marbury would be a start.

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Horrible analysis. We need a coach.

trading Marbury is the easiest way to rebuild. it might not be the best.


it will never happen with Zeke here.

"For turnarounds to happen, it takes bold trades (see Miami and Shaquille O'Neal); shrewd salary-cap moves (see Phoenix); great drafts (see Chicago); old-fashioned patience (see Seattle and Washington) and smart free-agent signings (see Phoenix and Steve Nash).

When you see how those five teams have flourished - four were lottery teams last season but will be in the playoffs starting Saturday"


What do the four that "were lottery teams last season" all have in common. C'mon - it's obvious. Need a clue? Here's a clue: the writer of this article does a bait and switch in order to blame marbles, but what these four teams have in common should tell you OUR real problem is not marbles.

Horrible article.

Felton and Bogut, or Felton and Marvin Williams would be worth Marbury.

since I don't personally own the knicks i dont car what marbles makes. our cap is screwed till h20 is gone anyway.

coach please

by the time h20 is gone, tt and hardaway will be gone too. marbles's contract is not a concern. i'm a fan, not the profiting owner of the franchise.

Who cares what they spend - in fact, spend some more and get us Phil!

What those four teams have in common is that they all got either new coaches or in the case of chicago a coach with a first full season. the fifth team, miami, got shaq. the writer must know that in the four teams he cherry-picked as examples a new, energetic, and skillful coach was central to the turnaround, but he completely ingnores this and then randomly blames marbles.

The knicks' cap isnt relevant until h20 is off the books, so we're stuck, for the next two years, with no cap space. the only option is to work with what we've got to work with. dumping marbles now makes no sense. layden's mess is with us till summer 2007, and until then cap-space is not relevant.

You damn well better believe it's relevant. Isiah has added contracts like Rose and Marbury and Crawford way past 2007, so it's more like Houston's contract is becoming irrelevant. The plan should have been not to add contracts past 2007 if you want to get under the cap, but that is a lost cause. We will still be well over the cap w/ or w/o Houston's contract. Isiah is gonna do everything in his power to trade the expiring contracts. He wont let them burn. If he's not successful, they burn not b/c that was his plan, but b/c he couldn't find someone who will take them for the right price. The cap is absolutely relevant b/c we need flexibility. We were never players for free agency since 1996. But we need the flexibility so we don't have any bad and untradable contracts, so we have the ability to make moves. Not to get any closer to signing free agents. It will be a long time before we become players for FA anyway. At this point, stop using Houston's contract as the scapegoat, b/c Isiah has added plenty of other bad contracts.

The others are all moveable this summer. Except H20. His isn't. Never was. Rose is highly tradeable, at any time, so his contract's length is irrelevant. By summer 2007 penny, tt, and H20 will all be gone, and the rest are tradeable contracts. until then, as you say, FA isn't an option. remember, this thread was about dumping Marbury now, which, I think should be clear, is nonsensicle to do now.