Good news! Stephon Marbury officially has the best job in America! Here on Election Day you probably thought Barack Obama was running for the right to have the best job in America, but you thought wrong. After all, which job would you rather have: the enormously challenging position of being President of the United States of America, or being paid close to $22 million dollars to keep the seat next to Eddy Curry nice and warm? Easy decision: Vote Marbury/Curry if you want to waste your money!
This news is coming in after Donnie Walsh, Mike D'Antoni, and Marbury met to try and resolve the tension arising from The Starbury Wars, the chronicles of which had become the big Knicks story the past few
years.
Considering Marbury would clearly prefer to play (and incidentally, should be lauded if he indeeds follows up on his promise to donate this year's salary to charity), and Walsh would surely prefer to pay someone for something -- anything! -- over giving away money for free, this seems to be a clear indication that Mike D"Antoni has won the first significant battle of the season; one can only hope he's not on the road to losing the war.
The coach would lose the war by allowing stubborn pride to get in the way of the franchise getting any sort of value out of Marbury's contract. Cause in the small picture everyone agrees that Marbury is not part of the future of the team, and once you throw in D'Ant's baggage with Marbury from Phoenix, it's understandable why Mike wants no part of Starbury in the rotation.
But in the big picture, if everyone concedes 2008-2009 as a lost season in terms of playoff/championship aspirations, and the real goal is to have flexibility for 2010, then the coach shouldn't tie the General Manager's hands just for the sake of a perfectly imperfect rotation. Especially if you can play Marbury, help establish that he still has some gas in the tank, and thereby increase his trade value.
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That trade value was highlighted a little yesterday when the Denver Nuggets and Detroit Pistons consummated the first blockbuster deal of the NBA season. On paper it looks like a win-win for both teams, but a lose situation for the Knicks as it thins out the market of potential suitors looking for a veteran point guard. It may have been a longshot, but theoretically that could have been Marbury heading to Denver.
Right now it's the wise move for for Walsh to let D'Antoni win this particular battle; the coach should have free reign on matters of playing time. But if the current trio of Knicks "point guards" continues to play at the underwhelming level they've shown in the first few games, D'Antoni may wish he didn't fight the Starbury Wars so strenuously.
