Marbury

Stephon Marbury appears to be headed to Boston which I think is a very nice additon to the Green (along with Mikki Moore) and I don't get why some Celtics fans don't want him. They say he is a "bad teammate" and "didn't want to play when the Knicks asked him to." I have to side with Marbury on that one. He was all set to play this season and then when the season started Mike D'Antoni said Marbury wasn't in the long term plans so he stuck him on the bench and said he wouldn't play him. Several weeks into the season, the Knicks run into some injuries and ask Marbury to suit up and play but he refuses. Can you blame him? He clearly has enough talent to be playing but they make him sit all season until they are desperate. Naturally the media makes it out like he is this big, bad villan who decided from training camp not to play for the Knicks when that isn't the case at all.

People are also saying that teams actually become better once Marbury leaves and they always use the 2001-2002 Nets as an example. But when you take a closer look you see that there were many reasons why the 2000-2001 team struggled and the 2001-2002 made a leap from missing the playoffs to the NBA finals. In '00-'01 the Nets had a lot of injuries to their main players. Kerry Kittles missed the entire season, Keith Van Horn missed over 30 games, Kendall Gill missed 50 games and even Marbury missed 15 games. Also consider Kenyon Martin was only a rookie and you have to figure it just wasn't going to be the Nets year. You can't place fault on Marbury when he was one of only two players in the NBA that season to avg. over 20 ppg., 7 apg., and 3 rpg. (Gary Payton was the other). So what happens the next season? Kerry Kittles is healthy and plays in every game; Van Horn plays 81 games; Martin improves after a year under his belt; they draft Richard Jefferson who has a solid rookie season; and they add some much needed size with the additon of 7 footer Todd MacCulloch. It's not hard to see why this team improved. Of course everyone just credits the additon of Jason Kidd and the departure of Marbury which I don't think is fair to say.

Marbury gets labeled as bad teammate for refusing to into the game against Detroit earlier this season but which is worse: refusing to go into a game or punching a teammate? That's right, everyone's favorite teammate Kevin Garnett not only punched a teammate but did it on two seperate occasions. The first teammate was Wally Szczerbiak back in 2000 after the two got in an argument over which game was better - Donkey Kong or Mortal Kombat (or something like that). The second was Rick Rickert during practice. The story goes that Rickert was dominating KG during practice and KG didn't like that this second round pick trying to make the team was trying so hard. After Rickert made another hoop on KG he was met by Garnetts fist which led to Rickert needing stitches to close up the wound. Now I love KG but lets not forget he wasn't always the model teammate.

One last thing on Marbury - people talk about him being labeled a "loser" but at what point in his career was he on a team that you could say was a title contender? Think about Garnett, Pierce and Allen: how many times did they make the finals before last season? Zero...just like Marbury.

Marbury is going to come into the Celts and fit in perfectly. He'll play how many minutes Doc tells him to and hit some shots and be a good teammate.