Falling Star
by rick olivares
Thirty National Basketball Association teams. Thirty stories.
Pardon my French, but whoever thought of tagline for the new season in the Association must not be from New York.
Oh, that’s right. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the NBA’s advertising agency for two years now is based in San Francisco.
So how about New York? You know – the Knicks?
They’ve got Mike D’Antoni who is a story unto himself. He was still in Marshall when the 1970 Thundering Herd football team was killed in one of the worst air disasters in sports and aviation history. After a short-lived NBA career, he found a home in Italy where he remains one of the Italian League’s greatest players. And most recently, he was the maestro of that thoroughly enjoyable blur of a basketball team that is the Phoenix Suns.
Then there’s Charles Dolan, the Cablevision magnate and team owner who is the Eastern Conference’s version of the Los Angeles Clippers’ Donald Sterling – forever mucking up the team works with questionable moves and decisions.
And there is that woeful Knicks team that went a collective 151-259 for a horrific 36% winning percentage under Isiah Thomas’ five year watch as General Manager and Head Coach. Since I already made a coast-to-coast comparison, I’m going two-for-two for trans-coast comparisons when I say that the team with all its on court and off court troubles opened up the East Coast Chapter of the Portland Jailblazers.
Nah, let’s not recount the rap sheet here, okay?
Speaking of Thomas, just when you thought that we have heard the last of the disgraced Hall-of-Famer, he was reported to recently have overdosed on sleeping pills. Sadly, the former Detroit Piston claimed that it was his daughter who was rushed to White Plains Hospital Center; a statement that responding paramedics steadfastly refuted.
Within days of that latest subplot in the never-ending soap opera that is the New York Knicks, there was a curious new entry.
Stephon Marbury was placed on the inactive list by D’Antoni.
That’s pretty much like saying, “We don’t want you anymore so we’re putting you in limbo where you cannot mess up our new-look Knicks team.”
Saddled with a huge contract that makes him virtually untradeable, the options aren’t many for Starbury. Either he takes a pay cut for a buyout or sits it out. Unfortunately, for the latter, he might not find any suitors.
Unfortunately, history has shown that each time a team unloaded Marbury, they made a dramatic turnaround in the standings.
Pardon my French, but whoever thought of tagline for the new season in the Association must not be from New York.
Oh, that’s right. Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the NBA’s advertising agency for two years now is based in San Francisco.
So how about New York? You know – the Knicks?
They’ve got Mike D’Antoni who is a story unto himself. He was still in Marshall when the 1970 Thundering Herd football team was killed in one of the worst air disasters in sports and aviation history. After a short-lived NBA career, he found a home in Italy where he remains one of the Italian League’s greatest players. And most recently, he was the maestro of that thoroughly enjoyable blur of a basketball team that is the Phoenix Suns.
Then there’s Charles Dolan, the Cablevision magnate and team owner who is the Eastern Conference’s version of the Los Angeles Clippers’ Donald Sterling – forever mucking up the team works with questionable moves and decisions.
And there is that woeful Knicks team that went a collective 151-259 for a horrific 36% winning percentage under Isiah Thomas’ five year watch as General Manager and Head Coach. Since I already made a coast-to-coast comparison, I’m going two-for-two for trans-coast comparisons when I say that the team with all its on court and off court troubles opened up the East Coast Chapter of the Portland Jailblazers.
Nah, let’s not recount the rap sheet here, okay?
Speaking of Thomas, just when you thought that we have heard the last of the disgraced Hall-of-Famer, he was reported to recently have overdosed on sleeping pills. Sadly, the former Detroit Piston claimed that it was his daughter who was rushed to White Plains Hospital Center; a statement that responding paramedics steadfastly refuted.
Within days of that latest subplot in the never-ending soap opera that is the New York Knicks, there was a curious new entry.
Stephon Marbury was placed on the inactive list by D’Antoni.
That’s pretty much like saying, “We don’t want you anymore so we’re putting you in limbo where you cannot mess up our new-look Knicks team.”
Saddled with a huge contract that makes him virtually untradeable, the options aren’t many for Starbury. Either he takes a pay cut for a buyout or sits it out. Unfortunately, for the latter, he might not find any suitors.
Unfortunately, history has shown that each time a team unloaded Marbury, they made a dramatic turnaround in the standings.
So has New York finally learned the lessons of history? Will any other GM make the same mistake of signing an agent of chaos with a long history of fermenting dissent?I once thought that Starbury, as he was nicknamed for his skills and mad game, had a great partnership with Kevin Garnett in Minnesota as he helped a young and talented Timberwolves team to back-to-back playoff appearances in 1997 and 1998.
But when T-Wolves General Manager Kevin McHale signed Garnett to a record-breaking $126 million contract, the troubles began. Marbury wanted a Garnett-sized contract for himself.
The third star on that team, forward Tom Gugliotta, pronounced himself unhappy with Marbury’s penchant for looking for his own shot rather than passing the ball around and that he wanted out.
When Marbury couldn’t get the mother of all NBA contracts, he too asked to be traded. He found himself shipped to the New Jersey Nets where he formed a great unit with Kerry Kittles, Keith Van Horn, Jayson Williams, and Kendall Gill.
I thought being so close to his native New York, he’d play some of his best hoops but it was not meant to be. Within a couple of seasons he was traded once more, this time to Phoenix where he partnered with Shawn Marion and Amare Stoudemire that shifted an already running and gunning Suns team to overdrive.
That Marbury bounce pass to a cutting Stoudemire for a vicious dunk on Michael Olowokandi (then playing for the Clippers) is highly memorable not just for its nastiness but also for Stephon’s pained expression that seemed to say, “That was so sick it had the flu!”
Sadly, the self-proclaimed best point guard in the NBA was once more on the move after his Suns teammates jettisoned him. “I think Stephon Marbury is a shoot-first point guard," said Stoudemire who merely repeated what everyone already knew. "We could've easily kept him (in Phoenix), but with the team we have, we've got so many guys who can score. We pretty much needed a pass-first, shoot-second point guard, and that's what Steve (Nash) is.”
Ouch. Starbury might have better individual stats but Nash is way up on wins and… Most Valuable Player Awards. Once hailed as an exciting player who could be one of the all-time greats, Stephon has played for four teams in 12 years and at every stop, the parting was at best acrimonious.
A year before Marbury joined the league in 1996, Sports Illustrated came out with an issue with
former New Jersey Net forward Derrick Coleman on the cover with a corresponding feature article by respected NBA writer Jack McCallum that lambasted the petulant and crotch-grabbing stars of the NBA that came in the wake of the 1992 Dream Team. Now, that boy from Coney Island with dreams of greatness on the basketball court has joined that list of the whoop-de-damn-dos.And perhaps like another former disgraced New York Knicks star, Latrell Sprewell, he just might find himself an unwanted player in the NBA. Even in his own hometown that is seeking to unload itself of one nightmarish story.
Post Script: Marbury was active but didn't play last Wednesday in the season opener, with some fans chanting "We want Steph!" in the second half of a victory over Miami.
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