Marbury “Declines to Play” for Knicks

Stephon Marbury is getting $20.8 million a year from the New York Knicks to play basketball. That's a fine salary for doing just about anything, but to receive it playing a kid's game is quite an arrangement. Moreover, to have that coming in despite underachieving one's entire career is astounding. Yet, “Starbury” has declined to play twice in the last week or so because he is unhappy. Perhaps a lawsuit for breach of contract would cheer him up.

New coach Mike D'Antoni has played Mr. Marbury but little (if at all) thus far in the season. He has decided “to go a different way” with the Knicks. Ideally, he wants to sign LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and has made some trades to get positioned for the salary cap issue that would bring. That left the team with only two other guards, and Mr. Marbury had a chance to showcase his talents. If it wouldn't get him more playing time as a Knick, it would surely burnish his credentials for his next team.

Instead, he sulked. The Knicks have fined him one-game's pay. A player's union lawyer is appealing that. What Mr. Marbury needs is an agent who can work something out for him with the Knicks and the rest of basketball. He hasn't got one, and he thinks he's doing just fine as it is. The truth is he doesn't have enough smarts to figure out that he doesn't have enough smarts.

Knick player Quentin Richardson said after Wednesday's loss, “"I don't look at him as a teammate.” He added, "He hasn't played with us all year. Regardless of what you have going on with the organization or what you have going on with your coach or whatever, you're not going to allow your teammates to be left out there the way we were basically being left out there. This is directed at us regardless if you're trying to stick it to whoever you're trying to stick it to. At the end of the day we're shorthanded, people are hurt. Once again, I don't pay attention to [Marbury] because I don't look at him as a teammate anyway.”

The local papers now are saying that he will either be sent home or released by the week-end. That isn't enough. Mr. Marbury has disgraced himself and his sport by showing contempt for everything but his own ego. It would serve him right if no one wanted to take him off the Knicks' hands. He could retire and spend the rest of his life complaining that he was persecuted and driven from the NBA. He won't be missed, not by a Knicks team that wants to win – something New York hasn't seen in a few years and something Mr. Marbury doesn't know how to do.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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