Celtics reportedly interested in Stephon Marbury

Don’t pencil the Boston Celtics in for their second consecutive NBA title just yet.  It appears that for some strange reason team GM Danny Ainge wants to make things more difficult for his team, as he’s reportedly interested in signing head case pointguard Stephon Marbury as soon as he can contractually free himself from the New York Knicks.

It certainly makes sense for the Celtics to bolster team depth, with PJ Brown and James Posey gone from last year’s team.  There was some interest in signing Dikembe Mutombo to improve the team’s interior defense, but he signed with Houston several days ago.  On the other hand, despite Boston’s third loss in four games to Portland on Tuesday night it’s a little premature to hit the panic button based on the team’s recent 19 game winning streak and their NBA best 28-5 record.

Nothing suggests “panic” and trying to over-manage the personnel more of a championship level team than rolling the dice on a proven locker room distraction and team chemistry cancer.  The 31 year old Marbury certainly has talent, but his utter lack of character, maturity and leadership more than outweigh any upside in his game. 

The mere consideration of signing Marbury is a move by Ainge that can preemptively be called “boneheaded”.  Rajon Rondo has been a revelation at pointguard for the Celtics, and shooting guard Ray Allen is an integral part of the team’s championship core.   With Marbury’s overly inflated perception of his skills, it’s unlikely that he’d accept a role where he’d be coming off the bench to play the point or spell Allen at the 2 guard spot—more than likely he’d be complaining to the media about not starting should either current Celtics’ backcourt leader have a bad game.

A bigger issue could be Marbury’s history with the Celtics’ leader Kevin Garnett.  Garnett and Marbury played together fairly productively in Minnesota—until Marbury burnt his bridges there and forced the team to trade him to New Jersey.  Garnett has done well to remain “above the fray” during Marbury’s soap opera with the Knicks, but the fact that he hasn’t exactly bent over backwards to support his former teammate is telling.  Sources are reporting that Garnett has “voiced no opposition” to the idea.  There’s a big difference, however, between not voicing objection and approving of the alleged Marbury signing effort.  In cases like these it sure seems prudent to err on the side of doing what will you’re your MVP candidate superstar happiest.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to see how an effort to sign Marbury could possibly play well with the famously passionate and vocal New England sports fans.  Ainge has been tone deaf to their wishes in the past, of course, but it may take a dose of their common sense to get him off of this pointless and potentially destructive tangent.  He could stand to be reminded of the old saying that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and the Celtic faithful might be the only ones in a position to impart this lesson.