The $20 Million Burn

Stephon Marbury is getting paid twenty-two million dollars this season. To sit on the bench. In street clothes.

That’s twenty-two million dollars. To sit on the bench. In street clothes.

It just has to be repeated to be believed. Even in this day and age of crazy salaries and crazier players and owners, it’s hard to fathom how anyone could get paid so much for doing so little.

The team that’s paying Marbury is the New York Knicks, a franchise that has fallen so far into the abyss of bad, that even the Los Angeles Clippers have a better reputation in the basketball world right now.

Marbury came to New York under different management amid hope that he might find a home in his home town. But if there’s anything we’ve learned about the guy they call Starbury, it’s that he has never been interested in anything but his own damn self.

I mean here is a guy who couldn’t find a way to play with Kevin Garnett. That’s how badly he wanted to be The Man. Everywhere he goes, he only reinforces his rep as a Cancer, no more so than this week when he has not once but twice refused to suit up for the Knicks who are short-handed because of cap-clearing trades and injuries.

It's been argued by some that Marbury has a legitimate beef with his bosses, who decided they didn't want him anymore and would rather he just take a buy out (a percentage of the money he's owed) and go away. This has been an ongoing saga since the middle of last season and every day the $22 million dollar man sits on the end of bench in long pants, has been one more day of the drama. Marbury has sat there quietly and yet ... well his just being there speaks volumes. Say the Knicks deserve what they get. The current owner was the owner when they acquired Marbury -- not like his ridiculous NBA max salary was a big ol' secret neither.

Marbury seems intent on walking away on his terms. Even if it costs him whatever shred of a decent rep he's got left. Seems to me a guy like Marbury who has spent 12 years in the NBA, who has never been near a championship, or ever been considered much of a team player, who has only so much left for pro ball, ought to have embraced this as an opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

It's not like it hasn't been done before. Think about it ... sports, politics, entertainment, they run on comebacks. It's our national pastime to embrace the bad guy/girl-turned-good story. As much as we seem to relish a good take down, it's the rise from the ashes we truly love. There is not a place in the world that roots harder and louder and with more passion for the underdog than this here U-nited States of America and the capital of comebacks is New York City. I mean pu-leaze, they wrote a damn song about it.

It's to Stephon Marbury's detriment that this is one lesson he has not yet learned.

Gotta be a difficult decision for any team to put a healthy guy on the pines. But GM Donnie Walsh and coach Mike D’Antoni, both in their first full seasons with the team, weren’t around when the Knicks traded for Marbury (getting him from D’Antoni’s Suns). He didn’t fit in then and never evolved from a look-to-score-first point guard with little appreciation for the limits of his abilities and no appreciable defensive abilities. As far as the new Knicks braintrust is concerned, he never really gave the Knicks any indication that he was figuring this out.

I had a chance to cover Marbury when he first came into the league. I knew his college coach from my days covering the ACC and he had always raved about his gifts, athletically and otherwise. But Marbury may be a classic example of a talent crowned way too early. He was such a star in his hometown of Brooklyn that he was called Starbury before he could shave. He grew up as Clyde Frazier might put it, trumping and thumping the expectations of the greats that had come before him. And he left college after just one season as the point guard for a good, but not even remotely great team, even though two of his teammates were future NBAers too.

Point guard is one of those positions in basketball that requires schooling. To be really good, it's not enough to just have the raw skills. Maybe you can't teach "feel" and reaction, but you can teach strategy and how to recognize defenses and understanding the subtlties of offense, knowing where your teammates are going before they do. LeBron James was annointed any number of ways before he even played one NBA game. That had wonderful instincts as a passer was not in question. But go back and watch his first year or two -- oh, he's wonderful to watch but more often than not, it's clear he has almost no idea what he's doing. He's just reacting. Fast forward to the present. The kid has totally upped his game. (Watch out, too. He's gonna get even better and it's going to be wicked fun to watch.)

Marbury has never really stayed in any situation long enough to learn how to be a true point guard. Plus, he bought into his own hype anyway and you would too if the world has been telling you how great you are since the day you dribbled a basketball. Sadly, he never realized that his talent was only going to take him this far and no farther.

Stephon Marbury is stuck. And he doesn't have a clue how he got here.

It's sad. He clearly loves to play basketball. He used to play it with such joy and his size and strength and speed -- he was the whole package. He’s done some good things for the community. As an interview, he was almost always forthright, helpful and polite. He seemed like he had a bright, active mind. But he doesn't appear to be thinking this through. How else do you explain a guy whose basketball life is dying an untimely death by his own hand and he doesn't even know it? You can’t even blame his agent – he doesn’t have one.

Maybe playing might not have saved him, but not playing hasn’t been the answer. If he shows he’s still got some game, he might have convinced a desperate GM to take a shot at him. Hell, Larry Brown hasn’t made a trade since he returned to coaching (his first coaching kid since a brutal and brief stint in New York coaching Marbury). The legendary roster flipper has got to be itching to make a deal, even for a guy he once rode like an evil step father.

But refusing to even suit up is just one more boldly dumb move by Marbury who seems unable to see how much the landscape has changed since he signed his NBA max deal. The Knicks have been overhauling their roster with an eye to a future that has never realistically involved Marbury. They have a slew of youngsters who need to play, players at the age where a well-respected coach like D’Antoni can mold to his system.

The goal of course is something much, much bigger – a reality Marbury seems blind to. The worst-kept secret in the sports world is that New York is gearing up for 2010 and what is expected to be best free-agent class, possibly in the history of the NBA. The way to get there is to stop what they were doing the past decade – acquiring relatively well-known quasi-stars with big, long-term salaries. The thinking was that these players were being dumped for financial reasons that had nothing to do with talent. To be sure, it was Isiah Thomas, as GM, and owner James Dolan -- perhaps the worst sports owner ever, a title for which you might be surprised has a lot of competition – who were the suckers, uh, I mean architects of this strategy.

Of course it failed. Miserably. All it got the Knicks was a roster of grossly overpaid, mismatched guys who they couldn’t give away. It’s now fallen on the new leadership, with Dolan thankfully remaining on the sidelines, to shed these contracts. The endgame is to get far enough under the cap to afford to make a legit run at James or Dwayne Wade or Chris Bosh or a combination of two of the above.

Last week, Walsh engineered two deals that put them well ahead of schedule. The guys they traded had salaries beyond 2010 and are still relatively young, but Marbury’s money comes off the books after this season. If it wasn’t for that huge salary, he might be a hot commodity – perhaps for a team that needs a point guard for a late-season run or as a rental to fill in for an injury. But so far, there’s been no takers. Seriously, I wouldn’t want to add him to my rec league team at this point.

And if Walsh can’t get a decent draft pick or a couple guys with low or expiring contracts, there’s no reason to trade him. In a perfect world, a buy out helps both parties. But Marbury would rather be petulant.

Marbury has had a difficult year, for sure but most of it was his fault. After feuding with Brown, he fought with Thomas, who knows a thing or two about volatile, talented point guards who like to shoot. He tried to take Marbury under his wing but in the end, it was his decision to remove him from the starting lineup that doomed Marbury’s season last year. Shortly after he returned to the lineup, his father died during a game. Marbury took some time off, but perhaps came back too early, the tragedy still unresolved for him, as it would be for anyone facing that. The rest of the year was one long lost weekend.

And when the Knicks brought in Walsh who in turn kicked Thomas to the curb -- to the delight of Knicks fans everywhere -- and brought in D'Antoni, the window of opportunity for Marbury was going to be small. I don't know how hard he tried to fit into D'Antoni's run-and-gun system. I don't know how he was in practice or if he made an effort to fit in, especially at the realization that other, younger players were going to play in front of him. I know he came into camp in great shape and he sort of said the right things to the press, but apparently Walsh and D'Antoni didn't get the impression that there star was going to be okay as one of the anonymous boys at the end of the bench.

So they asked him to take a buy out. Negotiations continued and no deal materialized. And then they told him that he wasn't going to play and the season began and the Knicks were not as bad as everyone thought they'd be. And then, well, then the LeBron James fire sale began in earnest -- a lot earlier than expected.

During the past week, the Knicks made two separate trades, dealing (among others) the team's two leading scorers this season. And one player they received in return, guard Cutino Mobley, has yet to play because of a problem discovered on his routine physical. Another guard is hurt and with Mobley not in uniform yet, the Knicks found themselves undermanned. Marbury was asked to suit up. He said no.

After he skipped Tuesday night’s game against the Pistons, teammate Quintin Richardson was quoted as saying he felt that Marbury wasn't even part of the team anymore.

“I don’t consider him my teammate. He hasn’t played with us all year,” Richardson told the New York Times. “He didn’t want to play with us. I don’t look at him as a teammate because teammates don’t do that.”

Times columnist William Rhoden wrote one of the few recent columns that doesn't make Marbury out to be the bad guy. His point is valid to a point -- I think he glosses over Marbury's role in this whole drama -- if he was a good teammate in the first place, there wouldn't be any need for this silly melodrama.

Whatever is motivating Marbury, he seems bent on sticking it to Knicks management. I would argue that most Knicks fans would like to do the same thing, too, but it’s doubtful many of us would do it at such a cost to our own reputations. As hard as it is to believe one team could make so many bad moves in such a short period of time, buying out Marbury doesn’t seem like one of them. If Walsh and D’Antoni don’t think he’s committed to the team, than what choice do they have?

Sports is a business. You look out for yourself. We’ve all heard athletes repeat those mantras. But doesn’t looking out for yourself include owning your mistakes and demonstrating that whatever your personal goals may be, you believe in the brotherhood of team?

If Marbury has proven consistent at anything over his career, it’s that he’s only out for himself. He had a chance to repair some of that damage. Whether he got bad advice or he’s just mad doesn’t matter. He’s not going to win this war.

That doesn’t mean he’s not going to get his. Oh, he’s gonna get paid. It might even happen this week, as the Knicks seem ready to give into his petulance and pay him his $22 million dollars. I’m sure he’s going to see it as a victory.

But at what cost to his own soul?

Update (November 28, 2008): The Knicks announced Sunday that they have suspended Marbury for one game for refusing to play. The suspension carries a one-game fine -- which is just under $200,000 for those counting at home. Meanwhile, Marbury was quoted in the New York papers as saying he doesn't "trust" D'Antoni and that the whole situation is the fault of Knicks' management. The NBA Players Association said they would appeal the "baseless" action. The plot thickens.

Marbury during better days.

Shyonelung at the Game

Went to see the Phoenix Suns play the Golden State Warriors at Oracle Arena in Oakland last night. Shaq was in the building, folks although he was in street clothes. I did notice he was joking and laughing with his new teammates. Alas, the Suns lost in a track meet but they did seem a little more freer than they've been this season. Like maybe they were having fun again. Ah, the weight of expectations. The impact of the big fella will interesting to see, the most interesting game coming up on Feb. 20, right after the All-Star Break against the Lakers and their new acquisition.

Here's some pictures from the game Wednesday night. Click on any of them to see them actual size.

Steve Nash, using his feet in pregame warmups




Shaquille O'Neal sighting. (He's the one in street clothes).



Baron Davis in the lane. Grant Hill (33) and Raja Bell closing in.



Mismatch. 6-2 Baron Davis tries to guard 6-11 Amare Stoudemire


Al Harrington driving to the hoop.



Artistic shot of Amare



Steve Nash and Boris Diaw



Warriors young star in waiting Monta Ellis



Warriors 'Captain' Jack -- Stephen Jackson, driving late.


Suns forward Amare Stoudemire goes up to rock the rim



Ellis driving the lane. He scored 37 points in the win.

Suns Burned

Somewhere in the middle of the chippy third quarter Wednesday night in Phoenix, it was clear how badly the Suns missed their two best big men. It was visible on the offensive side of the court for the Suns when playmaker extraordinaire Steve Nash would work the pick-and-roll. He'd go around a pick, get into the lane and when the defense closed in, he'd pass it off to .... Kurt Thomas?

Thomas was game but he's no Amare Stoudemire and that reality, more than anything else last night is what burned the Suns, putting them in a 3-2 hole in their best-of-seven playoff series.

You won't likely see as gutty a performance (on both ends of the court) from an aging defensive specialist like Thomas in a bigger game. He gave it all he had. But while Thomas is known for his ability to play tough under the basket, it's in bursts of minutes here and there, a total of 20 or so a game. Last night, he played nearly 40 minutes and by halftime he was sucking wind so bad he could barely answer Craig Sager's halftime interview questions. Or maybe it was Sager's lime green coat.

Considering their handicap, it was amazing to watch the Suns nearly run the Spurs off the court in the first half. They held them to season lows in points for a quarter (13 in the first) and a half (33 at intermission) but they couldn't score at their usual blistering pace and their short rotation all but gave out by the end of the game.

You could blast the league (as S.O.L. did yesterday here) for suspending the Suns best big man Amare Stoudemire and his backup Boris Diaw, and in my oh so humble opinion, you'd be right. But those two knuckleheads knew the rule and left the bench anyway, so some of the blame ought to be on their very broad shoulders.

The dirty, black-hatted Spurs -- a team I liked before this series -- now has the series lead, ahead 3-2. But as tough a loss this must have been for the Suns to handle (they held the lead for all but perhaps five minutes of the game), they have to feel good about the way they played and how easily they could have won this game despite being without two of their most important players (Did I mention that Stoudemire is leading his team this series in scoring and rebounding).

You could even that the Suns are missing another player too, even though he's on the floor for everyone to see. I'm talking about Leandro Barbosa. This is the cat who shredded the Lakers during the first round. There is just no way the Brazilian Blur should not be torching the Spurs up and down the damn court. The Spurs really don't have anyone who can hang with him. The problem is that his success really hinges on his shot and right now that shot is just not falling. Last night he was 3-for-12 for a measly eight points, only two more than the number of fouls he picked up (6).

S.O.L. predicted a Suns win last night and was feeling pretty damn good after the first quarter -- though I admit to being nervous at the relatively close score. A new day dawns for the Suns come Friday night in San Antonio?

Remember the Alamo, indeed.

Suns fans. Keep your tickets for Sunday. Game 7 will happen.

More Mets and the NBA Plays Rough

Route 101 North, at Sunset May 2007

The Mets have won four out of five games since shaving their heads. A small sampling to judge whether shaving heads makes you a better baseball team, considering they were 7-3 in the 10 games before they got really short haircuts.

More important, it seems to have done wonders for David Wright, who started the shearing in the first place. The Mets' poster boy has spent the first month and a half of the season mired in a slump. He seemed to be picking up from where he left off last season when he opened by extending his end-of-season hitting streak from last year, but it was clear he wasn't comfortable at the plate.

He finished April with a .244 batting average, one home run and a paltry 6 R.B.I. Not what you want to see from the number five hitter on the major's best run-scoring team.

But since shaving his head before last Tuesday's game in San Francisco, Wright has 7 hits, three home runs and a game-winning double. You know how swimmers and cyclists shave their heads (and other body parts) so they can be more aerodynamic? Well, Wright's got four stolen bases since the barber paid him a visit to his hotel room, including three in one game (a career high). I'm thinking now that Jose Reyes has finally joined the baldies on the team, I expect him to steal 200 bases this year.

Most important development this weekend is how the Mets played against the Milwaukee Brewers, this year's version of the 2006 Detroit Tigers (or the 2005 White Sox) as MLB's most surprising team. The Brew Crew came into Shea with a swagger -- and the major's best record. They looked like world-beaters in crushing the Mets 12-3 on Saturday but that impressive work was sandwiched between two methodical victories by the Mets. It was the first road series loss of the season for the Brewers.

Rough and Tumble

Right now, the most fun-to-watch teams left in the playoffs are getting beat down by more bigger, more physical teams. Saturday's Spurs-Suns Game 3 was about as physical game as I've seen since the Lakers-Spurs series in 2004. That's when San Antonio crushed the Lakers at home in the first two games in part because this youngster named Tony Parker was driving to the basket with abandon and success. Only when the series went back to L.A., suddenly Parker was mugged every time he went to the hoop -- except the refs weren't calling fouls anymore. In the first two games of the series, the foul calls were even at 51 apiece but over the next four games -- all Lakers wins -- the Lakers got 126 fouls to the Spurs' 87.

I'm not blaming the refs for this disparity, just pointing out the importance of aggressive play during the playoffs. The first two games Parker pretty much scored at will in the paint, driving and scoring layups or dishing to an open man. He seemed to be going at a different speed than the Lakers' defense.

That all changed in Game 3. The Lakers, having nothing much to lose with a 0-2 deficit, started collapsing on Parker when he drove into the paint and making it hard for him to get off a shot. No question he was getting fouled on some of those drives but it was the playoffs, man, and the theory is you don't get those calls in the playoffs. The Lakers held court and then used a miracle shot by Derek Fisher with four-tenths of a second on the clock to steal Game 5 and that was all she wrote for those seemingly fragile Spurs. Parker scored 50 points in the first two games of the series. The last four? That's right, 50 points -- total.

The Spurs learned a lesson back in 2004 and used it with authority in Game 3 at home against the free-flowing Suns. Two things they did great on Saturday. One is they stayed in front of the King of Point Guards. And two, whenever he did get by a defender, there was always someone waiting to help out on D. But they also played tougher physically and there was a lot of extra-curricular banging and bumping in that game -- by both teams. The only difference it seemed to me, was that the Spurs didn't let it effect them and they made their shots

Nash did not respond to the pounding correctly in the first half -- he looked and acted frustrated. It didn't help the Suns that their biggest man on the floor was saddled with three fouls in the first half and played 19 seconds in the third quarter before picking up ugly number four. But there's hope for Suns fans, in S.O.L.'s view. Nash played a great quarter and for all his youth and too much talking, Amare is a smart kid gifted with an instinct for the game. Plus, for the first time perhaps all season, Boris Diaw played like he did in his coming-out party last year in the playoffs. I believe the Suns are tougher than they get credit for and I predict the series goes to Phoenix tied 2-2.

Up here in the Bay Area, the Golden State Warriors have been all the rage. And why not. They all but swept the defending Western Conference champions out of the playoffs and their open three-point-shooting, in-your-face, speed-demon style is fun as hell to watch. Plus, they opened the playoffs with four victories on their home court, almost all of them by double-digits.

The buzz kill has come in the face of the Utah Jazz. Using tough inside play and showing the discipline to withstand the inevitable roaring-crowd-fueled runs by the young Warriors, the Jazz host Game 5 on Tuesday on their home court leading the series 3-1. No one is really counting out the Warriors but it's hard to see them winning three straight, even with the kind of magical playoffs they've been having.

The Warriors can win if they keep hitting those big threes, but they have to find a way to stop Carlos Boozer from scoring inside. Boozer has become a real floor leader for the young Jazz and he's battling a rep as being too soft under the basket. Okay, so it's not saying all that much against a Warriors team that plays small ball, but still, Boozer has to make those big shots. When he hit two consecutive tough inside jumpers at a critical moment early in the game with a frenzied crowd in his ears, you just had to know he was going to show up at crunch time. And let's face it, if Boozer isn't scoring inside, Fisher doesn't get those open looks in the fourth and maybe they're going back to Utah tied 2-2 instead of up 3-1. It doesn't help Golden State's mojo that Fisher is having a storybook run of his own and Deron Williams and Paul Millsap are growing up before our eyes.

Love watching the Warriors. Love the fan support -- even the Lakers and Kings haven't done what the Warriors did last night -- but I've got a family the magic runs out in Salt Lake.

Speaking of the NBA Playoffs, we all had to watch the games on ABC this weekend. I love Mike Breen - I think he's one of the best broadcasters going these days. But the sexy chicks singing that stupid "right now" song? Please, get rid of that shit. It's beyond bad. It's embarrassingly bad. ABC -- please cease and desist. Right. Now.

Can't Stand the Heat

Remains of the Day, Healdsburg, April 2007
After an unintended absence, I'm back, one week into the NBA playoffs and one month into the basketball season. Lots to talk about and I won't get to it all today but get ready for a series of posts in S.O.L.'s frenzied attempt to make up for the last couple of weeks of silence.

As I write this, the most interesting NBA playoff series is probably reaching halftime of game three. Since I'm Tivo-ing that game (Dallas vs. Golden State), I will write about the results tomorrow. I picked Dallas before the series, however, and I still think they'll pull it out. But more on that Monday.

D-Wade, Shaq and the Heat have left the building in rather inglorious fashion. I hate to blame stuff on injury but Wade did not look like his old self and I suspect his injuries (shoulder and knee) are bothering him more than he admits. The guy almost always plays with a smile on his face, not the grimace that was planted there throughout the series. He's a warrior and for my money, the best clutch guy in the league and an early exit might be the best thing for him. At least he'll get to rest.

I told anyone who would listen that I liked the Bulls to make a run this year -- and that was before the season started, back when they signed Ben Wallace. I'm not sure they have enough defensive ability (outside of Big Ben) and they can go for long stretches without scoring, but it will be interesting to watch them after they swept the suddenly old-looking Heat out of the playoffs. One thing is Shaq looked mad at the end of the game. That has to be a good thing. I hope Grant Hill doesn't retire and ends up signing with the Heat. I think Shaq, Riley and Company have one more run in them and Hill would make it interesting.

Back to the Bulls who now must play the resurgent Pistons. Big Ben going against his old pals and the team he believes snubbed him by not offering a big enough contract in the off-season. This is sort of a youth vs. experience series though Deetroit ain't that old. I think it's anybody's series but if you hold a gun to my head, I'll say Pistons in six.

So far, though, that's the only second-round series already set. New Jersey and Phoenix both have 3-1 leads in their series and Cleveland is up over the decimated Wizards three games to none.

San Antonio is up 2-1 in an entertaining pick-up series against Denver, another young coast-to-coast team. The Nuggets are proving that two shooting stars can co-exist in the same line-up though the Spurs are showing that old school has its advantages. San Antonio has a huge advantage on the sidelines, though. Greg Poppovich has a much bigger brain than George Karl, another NBA re-tread that for some reason has half the league convinced he can actually coach.

And then there's Kobe and the Lakers. The Suns rushed off to a 2-0 lead by pretty much crushing the Lakers at home in Phoenix but the Lakers came back to win a tough game three at home. Suddenly the basketball world was calling it a series. Well, not after today. Steve Nash led the Suns from the start and even though the game was close at the half, it felt like a Suns pace which is deadly to the slow-footed Lakers. When Kobe started chucking up shots in the middle of the second quarter S.O.L. knew the Lakers had no chance.

Nash finished one short of tying the all-time playoff record of assists in a game and finished with 23 dimes. His 15 at intermission set a record for a first half.

I think the Suns are far too talented to lose a seven-game series to the Lakers but they have had trouble holding big leads and they've been known to suffer defensive let downs. On Sunday, the Lakers' coach had a good game plan and they were executing well. Kobe's teammates were all contributing and getting their touches which is just what the Suns were afraid of -- a balanced attack. But then Kobe started shooting and forced a couple of shots and the next thing you know, his teammates are standing around again waiting for him to do something.

Later in the third quarter, even when the Black Hole passed the rock, his teammates didn't convert. What did he expect? They'd gotten so cold in between touches, they would have been warm in a meat locker. For the third time in the series, Kobe was a non-factor in the second half. This is the guy touted as the greatest player in the game today? To quote a fellow friend and blogger, Buuullllshiiit!

Now the Suns have a 3-1 lead and head home to Phoenix where they should settle the score.

Tomorrow: Trouble in Big D???