Knicks ready to waive Stephon Marbury

The New York Knicks are finally preparing to do what they should have done a long time ago—bite the bullet and send Stephon Marbury packing. Marbury, who in the past few years has been completely unproductive on the court and utterly classless off of it, is in the final year of his contract which will pay him $21.9 million dollars. The Knicks’ basketball people are ready to do the deal, but must first get the approval of MSG chairman James Dolan as they’ll no doubt have to eat another big chunk of money in a buyout deal.

Marbury’s most productive season with the team came in 2004-05, where he averaged 21.4 PPG and 8.1 assists per game. He would have had to triple these numbers to make it worth keeping him around with his horrible attitude and off court behavior. His basketball performance continued to erode over his tenure in New York, and he shut it down midseason last year citing “bone spurs in his ankle”. When he wasn’t underachieving on the court, he was feuding with his coaches off of the court—Larry Brown was fired to keep Marbury happy. He then began feuding with new coach and team President Isiah Thomas on way to being named in a 2006 NY Newsday article as “the most reviled athlete in New York”.

The 2007-2008 season, Marbury’s presumptive swansong as a Knick bordered on the comical with him seldom playing either due to injury or simply because he didn’t want to. The final breakdown began where after learning that his coach was going to take him out of the starting lineup he simply left the team. Further reports suggest that he and Thomas came to blows on the Knicks’ team plane and that he threatened to “blackmail” his coach—all with other Knicks as witnesses, indicating that he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. Despite all of this, Thomas and the Knicks continued to try and make it work—more out of the reality that no one wanted a malcontent point guard making eight figures a year and that a trade bordered on the impossible.

To fully chronicle Marbury’s bad behavior would take an entire book, but further highlights of his 2007-2008 season was the revelation at Isiah Thomas’ sexual harassment trial that he’d had sex with an intern in the parking lot of a strip club (despite the fact that Marbury is a married father) and his comments defending Michael Vick and dogfighting after the former Atlanta Falcons’ QB was convicted for his crimes. Basically, he and coach Isiah Thomas spent most of the past couple of years in an unwitting duel to see who could do the most to further damage the proud tradition of the New York Knicks.

Finally, the MSG management woke up and realized that they were a franchise defined by Willis Reed and Patrick Ewing, not by hapless coaches like Thomas and egomaniacal thugs like Marbury. Thomas was the first to go, being replaced by competent professionals in his dual roles as team President (Donnie Walsh) and head coach (Mike D’antoni). Barring anything unforeseen, Marbury will follow within the next few days and the Knicks can begin the task of rebuilding their team on the court and their team’s image in the league and community.

The potential coda to the Marbury saga is equally comical—despite compelling evidence that his on-court productivity is on the downswing and overwhelming evidence that he’s cancerous for the chemistry of a basketball team there are actually NBA franchises desperate enough to sign him after he clears waivers. Reports indicate that talent desperate Miami has interest, as does the LA Lakers. Perhaps the Lakers think that a dominant superstar like Kobe Bryant can reign in Marbury much as Michael Jordan did with Dennis Rodman. The problem with that theory is that Marbury and Rodman are “apples and oranges”—while Rodman had his issues, they were minor in compared to Marbury. On the court, Rodman was an absolute monster during his Bulls tenure and is arguably the best rebounder and defensive power forward in NBA history. His fistful of NBA championship rings with two teams didn’t happen by accident.