WE don’t know whether there really is a rat to be smelled when Jason Kidd, Michael Redd and Baron Davis, two of whom have outscored Stephon Marbury this year, one of whom is the only player in the NBA to be averaging more assists, are named to the Eastern Conference All-Star team and the Knick guard who played 34 games in the West is not.
Nor can there be any real fault to be found this time in often-compromised fan voting process that chose Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady.
“Stephon Marbury has been in the East for two weeks, that’s why he didn’t make it,” said Indiana coach Rick Carlisle.
The coaches cannot vote for their own players, which doesn’t always mean that the politics sometimes don’t stink, just like the defense that surely will next Sunday in Los Angeles, when Marbury, like much of America, says he will not be watching.
Hey, it’s just an All-Star Game. Quick now, who won last year? By April, if you remember anything about this year’s contest, it probably will be the halftime show. And even there, the bar has been raised beyond anything that mere world-class basketball players, even unguarded ones, can do.
Thus, if you are outraged at the thought of Marbury, who has come home, staying home next weekend and leaving the Knicks without a representative, we predict you will get over it, maybe even faster than Lenny Wilkens has apparently decided that Frank Williams can’t play. And whether Marbury’s nose grew as he shrugged it off last night, or really deserves to have it out of joint, the most important thing is never mind what he says, but how does he really feel?
And that, probably, is mad at whoever didn’t show him the proper respect like uh, Pacers, yeah, those Eastern Conference-leading Pacers, the next team in his face last night at The Garden.
“I only know how to play the way I know how to play,” Marbury said before the game. “I’ve been playing, averaging 20 points and nine assists, helping my team win.
“I felt like I was supposed to be on the team, but . . . you can’t get mad over what you can’t control. I can’t get mad if it rains.”
No, but he can pour in another 35, like he did Saturday night against Phoenix after swearing on the close-cropped head of Keith Van Horn that he had no animosity toward his most recent former team at all – the Suns, who had only wanted to get under the cap, and after all, had sent him to the place he most wanted to be. But the guard’s 22-shot chucking in the Knick win suggested that deep down, he felt more rejected than a Charles Smith putback.
Four teams in six years may not make you the expert shirt folder and sock roller that the immortal Chris Gatling became. But having been told not to let the door hit him in the rear on the way out of New Jersey, and only a month ago being sacrificed in a youth movement at doddering age of 26, Coney Island’s finest has been living The Cyclone. By now, Marbury may need even more than the big hug he has gotten from Isiah Thomas and the renewed buzz of the Garden, like maybe a chip on his shoulder the size of Tractor Traylor.
“It’s not that serious,” he said. “My biggest thing is making it to the championship. Winning one would be way more fun than playing in the All-Star game.
“It’s a great honor and a lot of fun, but its something I have no control over.”
Unlike the games, that he has utter control over, ones that the Knicks need to keep winning to get to where they have to go, which will take Marbury to many more All-Star Games, whether he deserved to be in this one over somebody else or not.