The Knicks fell to 1-2 against Milwaukee last night, the third straight game overshadowed by Stephon Marbury's status as the nation's best-paid spectator. Even with Eddy Curry out of the lineup because of a knee injury, Mike D'Antoni dressed Jerome James, who is less likely to play for the team than D'Antoni's grandmother, instead of Marbury. Clearly, an end to this situation must come soon.
To that end, GM Donnie Walshis going to hold a meeting with Marbury today to discuss options. There are three of them. The first is to play Marbury. Future with the team or not, it's not difficult to see the merit of that solution after the last two games. The guards that are playing have shown little sign of handling the workload. Whatever else Marbury may be, he's a better player than Mardy Collins and Nate Robinson, although it's clear that this option is the least palatteable to D'Antoni.
Option two, keeping him but not playing him, is another non-starter. It ensures that the Marbury distraction will linger over the entire season, creating unneccesary distractions from the tasks at hand. Holding onto him to trade him is a pipe dream, and just having him sit there while lesser players lose games makes the organization look terrible. Walsh has already made said the idea of the meeting is to take this option off the table.
"No, that's why I've got involved," he said. "That's not my intention (to keep him inactive) at this point."
All of which brings us to option three, Marbury's immediate departure. There isn't any other reasonable solution to this mess. It's not a matter of money, you'll be paying him either way, but a matter of practicality. If we are to believe D'Antoni when he says that Marbury isn't playing because he isn't part of the team's future, then he should be made part of the team's past. Make it clean, make it simple and, above all else, make it fast.
