WE KNOW all about bad trades around here. We know all about
Ryan-for-Fregosi and Otis-for-Foy and Kazmir-for-Zambrano. We know all
about McGriff-for-Murray and Drabek-for-Rhoden and Buhner-for-Phelps,
and certainly we could go on and on about Gerald
Henderson-for-the-pick-that-wound-up-being-Scottie-Pippen.
We know about Seaver-to-Cincinnati.
We know about Dr. J-to-the-Sixers.
Bad deals, all of them. Some historically bad.
But there's a difference between a bad trade that produces
on-field/on-court regret and a decade or two of shaken heads, and
trades that yield nothing but fiasco, trades that might make sense on
paper but wind up being the kind of transactions that reduce
franchises to dust. In some ways, these are even more demoralizing,
the kinds of moves that inspire hope and produce despair instead.
The KnicksNew York Knicks always have specialized in these
transactions, going all the way back to Bob McAdoo and Spencer
Haywood, which was around the same time they also tried selling their
soul for George McGinnis, and simply weren't able to pull that one
off. It makes sense, actually, because basketball is a game that
always presents the illusion that one man can make everything
different. The problem is identifying that one man; LeBron James is
one thing; Marvin Webster is quite another.
And Stephon Marbury is in a class by himself.
Look, it is always important to keep balance in the equation when you
evaluate Marbury's career. It is important to remember how good -
inarguably good - he has been throughout much of his career, even the
time he's spent in New York. Factor everything else out - the sour
moods, the impetuousness, the ill-advised side-of-the-head tattoo, the
towel - and focus on the basketball, and judge just the on-court
product, and he has been a very good player.
Excluding last year's lost season, Marbury entered this year with
career Knicks averages of 18.6 points and 7.1 assists, and that is
worth noting because those are absolutely comparable with the career
numbers posted by the sainted Clyde Frazier (18.9 points/6.1 assists).
If he always showed a strange reluctance to take the last shot
throughout his Knicks career, there is little to argue that across any
game's first 47 minutes and 50 seconds, he was usually about as good
as you could ask him to be.
And it is this that separates him from other athletes who arrived in
New York with big reputations and fell flat on their faces. Roberto
Alomar and Mo Vaughn always are presented as cases of prototypical
stars who lost their glimmer when they came to New York, for example,
because their play with the MetsNew York Mets was never anywhere
close to where it had been previous to that. Larry Csonka's time with
the Giants is a fine example of that, as is Craig Morton's. And as big
a star as Boomer Esiason has become in the New York media world, it is
helpful to remember that in his three years with the Jets, he compiled
a record of 15-27 as a starter.
Those acquisitions qualify as busts because of what became of them on
the field and on the court.
Marbury?
Marbury is even harder to qualify. It is why you have to consider
everything else: his status as Isiah Thomas' prized foundation piece;
his dalliance with the intern; his sneers and scowls; the way he
always manages to alienate so many of his teammates; the walkout last
season; his epic cold war with Larry Brown; his Howard Dean act on the
Mike Francesa show last summer; the head buried in the towel.
After awhile, those things add up. They become exhausting to tolerate,
especially when you consider the way the Knicks have lost in his
tenure. Now, they lost an awful lot in the years preceding Marbury's
arrival too. He may be basketball's ultimate "cooler," and the teams
he leaves always have gotten much better after his departure. That's a
skill only Alex Rodriguez can approach, but it wasn't as if his
arrival broke up a championship group, either.
But there is a reason why Marbury has become the symbol of chronic
Knicks failure now that Thomas is out of the picture and James Dolan
has wisely ceded (for now anyway) almost all of the operation to
Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni. There is a reason, clearly, why
D'Antoni chose to bench Marbury opening night as a symbolic gesture of
a new sheriff's shiny new badge.
Those who chanted for Marbury had every right to do it (despite what
D'Antoni might really think) because as a basketball player Marbury
has never been a bust, and at 31 should still have plenty of game left
in his legs. But D'Antoni has every right to purge the very essence of
Marbury, too, because if his talent hasn't failed him as a Knick, his
time here has been a failure nonetheless. Maybe the most epic kind of
failure we have ever seen around here. And that's saying something.
Mike Vaccaro's e-mail address is michael.vaccaro RemoveThis @nypost.com
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