And a Time to Die. November 22, 2007
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I gave up on the Isiah Thomas era midway through the fourth quarter against Golden State. From my seat in the 400s, I had a moment of clarity that enabled me to see through the dense fog of Anucha and Stephs On A Plane to the true fatal aspect of the Knicks season. It nagged at me even through the Denver win and it was this: No one has taught this team to play any defense, at all.
It’s an acute enough problem to outshine the fact that Isiah lost the team after his failure to suspend Marbury for going AWOL despite the apparently unanimous desires of the rest of the team. Even mutiny can be overcome, can even spur a team to greater heights purely out of spite. But after getting the team to care about winning last year, his next charge for this season was clear: Get someone other than Renaldo Balkman to play defense. It is here that he has failed most profoundly.
Marbury’s perimeter defense is the stuff of tollbooth clerks. David Lee’s strengths and weaknesses become more clear with each game, and defense is among the latter. (Rare is the player who can rebound like crazy but not guard a lick. David is that player…). Curry’s defensive effort has improved drastically this year, but his knowledge of how to do it has evolved in like fashion. Zach Randolph’s much trumpeted liabilities in this respect has proven real. And so on.
For this reason alone, Isiah needs to leave. And for this reason alone, I continue to wish the Knicks hadn’t hired Lenny Wilkins instead of Mike Fratello when the opportunity was there years ago.
As for Marbury: I’m done with him, too. It’s not a matter of his ability. And I continue to think that he’s been underrated and unfairly maligned for happening to precede Jason Kidd and Steve Nash on his two previous teams. But it’s become clear that no one on his team likes him or much wants to play with him. Bill Simmons’ interview with Gus Johnson–who defends Marbury, but sees many reasons not to–was revelatory in this respect. From a personality standpoint, Marbury’s redeeming factor is that he came from nothing in order to get where he is. Unfortunately, as Simmons pointed out, that’s not enough to make it enjoyable to play with you. It makes you admirable, perhaps even a role model, but not a leader. And as Isiah has pointed out, the Knicks desperately need a leader.
I don’t see how we trade him. If we can get away with buying him out, we do it. We draft a point guard next year and start over.
I really didn’t think I’d be writing a white flag post this early. I may be done with this for a while.
If you choose to tighten the noose around your own neck slightly, turn to page 96. If you begin stockpiling arsenic, turn to page 33. November 17, 2007
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Knicks fly to Arizona on plane. Isiah demotes Marbury on plane. Marbury fights Isiah on plane, threatens to blackmail him (with…?). Plane lands. Marbury flies back to New York. Isiah claims Marbury is AWOL. Marbury claims he is absent with permission. Isiah deliberately clarifies nothing. Knicks start Mardy Collins. Collins injures ankle. Knicks lose. Marbury flies back to New York. Marbury, Isiah clarify nothing about what happen. Knicks fine Marbury for $180,000. Isiah holds team vote, pledging that if any of his teammates voted for Marbury being suspended, he’d suspend him. Several teammates vote in favor of suspension. Marbury plays the next night without suspension anyway, coming off the bench behind… Fred Jones. Fred Jones is awesome. Knicks lose. Marbury is permanently demoted. Isiah and Marbury call uneasy truce. All this while Zach Randolph misses every other game to mourn his grandma’s loss, presumably as only Zach Randolph can, and names like “Jared Jeffries” become frighteningly relevant and “Renaldo Balkman,” less so.
Under ten games in. My head hurts. But the comments to this are awesome.
Dust hasn’t cleared, but let’s yammer anyway. November 14, 2007
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The chorus will come: This is a good thing. Stephon Marbury was crazy. Stephon Marbury couldn’t function without the lion’s share of the shots. Every team Marbury leaves gets better afterwards. Who needs him?
Make no mistake, though. Very little about this is good.
Marbury had been, for the most part, a reasonably functional part of the offense. If he had exhibited a problem this season, it was his perimeter defense careless passing at untimely junctures at games. But no one can say that he had starved the (prolific, to this point) Randolph-Curry tandem of shots, and Jamal Crawford had gotten his share of looks and then some. His 2007-08 flaws were not the stuff championships were made of, but they do not fit into the usual Marbury misfit mythology that generally circulates. So, there: You can now ignore 75% of tomorrow’s New York Daily News and New York Post coverage of the Marbury mess. You’re welcome.
Mardy Collins exists chiefly as an idea at this point. Nate Robinson is not a point guard in any readily cognizable sense. Jamal Crawford’s major problems so far have all involved his handle and his dishing. Seeing as this team was built to make the playoffs now, shouldn’t somebody proven run the point? Marbury may need to sit when he’s having a bad night, and perhaps even on offense-defense substitutions late in games, but let’s not pretend he isn’t, by a good margin, the best floor leader available.
The good thing here: At least Isiah is keeping people accountable. It’s clear that no one on the team has carte blanche if Starbury doesn’t, and Thomas noted today that he’d taken Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford to task as well. (Which is interesting, since, save for some obvious gaffes and Curry’s performance against the two Florida teams, I thought both had played well. Unlike, say, Q. Richardson). This represents a necessary evolutionary development in the team’s culture.
But let’s not kid ourselves about the who’s missing. If this isn’t solved soon, it’s a huge, huge hole.
In other news: RIP, Zach Randolph’s grandma. Although, if it had to happen, now’s a good time. Just grieve privately.
Armaggedon, Five Games In November 13, 2007
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There goes the season. Sorta. My take tonight. Ricky Gervais is involved
Initial Disclosures: The Delightful Madness of Stephon Marbury August 24, 2007
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UPDATE: So FreeDarko pretty much had the exact same thought process, right down to the invocation of Tracy Morgan. This is an astonishing and almost demoralizing coincidence. Maybe just don’t read this post, and wait for my parallels between David Lee and Norm MacDonald.
From New York City, this is Rockin’ Steady.
“They say that I’m crazy, but I’m crazy in love; that’s what it is.”
-Stephon Marbury
1. “That’s why they all say / There goes Astronaut Jones…”
Stephon Marbury’s utter batshit craziness crept up on me.
There were signs. At one point, while I was in college and Marbury was on the Nets, my friend Brian frantically IMed me to let me know that, in a curious development, the point guard had begun referring to himself in “the fourth person,” as someone named Starbury. I spent a full half hour debating the very idea of fourth-person reference, a concept I had never encountered but decided I rather liked. And I didn’t make much more of it than that.
There were little things after that. The odd interview nugget on those rare occasions when the Nets or Suns would make national television appearances. His philanthropic streak, rare among basketball players: he donated over a million dollars to Katrina relief efforts, and of course there was the $15 Starbury shoe, an idea so practical and socially aware that it probably should’ve prompted me to question his sanity. When the Knicks acquired Zach Randolph early this offseason, Stephon’s enthusiastic and ungrammatical reaction raised a single eyebrow, and only briefly. He conjured the mental image of a hardcourt-bound Manny Ramirez, only one who knows what sport he is playing and watches Sportscenter now and then.
I found this charming.
And then came Starbury’s answer to Crispin Glover on Letterman. Please, if you haven’t, watch the whole thing. We’ll still be here when it’s over.
And then, of course, there was this more recent episode, resolved (or finessed) just yesterday.
2. Watch Me Now
I, for one, welcome Marbury’s newfound insanity. I see it as a logical response to a basketball’s largely illogical response to him. The preferred basketball narrative concerning Marbury reads as follows:
a. Every time Marbury leaves a team, it gets better. See, e.g., Jason Kidd’s New Jersey Nets, Steve Nash’s Phoenix Suns.
b. This proves that Marbury is a selfish player.
Most who espouse this read are wholly unable to connect statement a to statement b in any non-tautological manner, and most are even more loathe to watch Stephon Marbury play and explain, as the game progresses, how this statement meshes with what transpires before them. In truth, Marbury has averaged an almost unprecedented 20 points and 8 assists for a reason, and has done so while decreasing his shot attempts over time. He is a prodigious penetrator who’s forays into the paint are often a team’s best scoring option. Even less appreciated fact: He is, for my money, the strongest point guard in the league, physically, and a pain for opposing point guards to cover (this is particularly true in playoff settings where the same guy has to cover him several times in a week–witness what Marbury did to the Spurs in their first round playoff series in Marbury’s last full Phoenix season). I’d like to see him post up every once in a while, a la Mark Jackson late in his career.
Sometimes, lightning strikes twice, and Kidd and Nash are among the best point guards ever to play the game. Consider contextual circumstances for each of those other episodes (the temporary ascendancy of Kenyon Martin and friends, the promotion and finally realized genius of Mike D’Antoni), and it’s even less surprising that the Nets and Suns improved after Marbury was traded.
The rap on Marbury continues uncorrected, and rhetorical convenience molds the collective memory regarding Coney Island’s finest. No one remembers how functional the (on-court) rapport between Marbury and Keith Van Horn was–on a playoff team–before the Knicks foolishly traded KVH for Tim Thomas. No one considers that Marbury and Kevin Garnett were about 16 years old when they experienced their growing pains as Timberwolves. And so on.
And so, Marbury has simply developed his own defense mechanism: Go mad. Say what you want, and have fun doing it, because no one will like you unless you win. Shun the non-Knick world–what care you what Knick fans think of your sanity? They won’t let themselves like you when you try to invade their “normal” space. Have fun and say and do what makes you happy, because a happy Stephon will be able to endure the mental and physical rigors of the 82 game marathon successfully. The nightly drive home from the Garden (or Purchase) is made more pleasant by taking the detour through Toontown, after all. Perhaps basketball and lunacy can fuse into something liberating and gorgeous.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
I pull hard for Stephon Marbury because his rap is undeserved and I like justice. I pull for him because I think he plays the game in a way that should, by any reasonable estimation, make teams better. And I pull for him because, deep down, I sense that he and I are kindred spirits…
