no game thread for Jamal’s return to the Garden?

the GS announcers said last night “he hit nine game-winning shots as a Knick”, they were so impressed. how many did he miss, 30? 40? 50?

Done. Game thread is up.

But if buying him out and saving the most possible money was the ultimate goal why not approach Stephan in June and simple say “we are going in a different direction would you like us to buy you out now or would like a chance to showcase yourself in preseason to increase your value”, then the Knicks could have a buyout prearranged and simply let Stephan play in preseason to audition for a job or buy him out earlier which ever he prefers. That way the Knicks are honest and straightforward, no one gets their pride hurt, and Marbury has an actual incentive to expediate the buy out process.

So if they were in fact looking to buy him out they went about it all wrong and if they were trying increase his trade value then paying more for a buy out is a reasonable price to pay for trying trade him before buying him out. The Knicks can’t have it both ways keep him to trade, screw his chances of getting a long contract and still expect a bargin on the buyout.

On top of all that the Knicks failed to be honest with Marbury which is inexcusable even if there was logic behind the deception.

the GS announcers said last night “he hit nine game-winning shots as a Knick”, they were so impressed. how many did he miss, 30? 40? 50?

Second, what has Q done to justify either his contract or his spokemanship status, other than stink up the court 4 out of every 5 games?

I’m curious to hear what you think Marbury has done to justify his contract during his time with the Knicks.

I’d expect better production from someone with Q’s contract but I’d expect playoff wins from someone with Marbury’s.

… he outplays every guard on the team in preseason within the system you are playing …

We don’t know what he’s done in scrimmages, but if you’re judging from preseason, he disappeared when he started for Crawford against Boston and was outplayed by both Duhon and Nate throughout the preseason.

Thomas B. – totally appropriate analogy. As another Brooklyn kid, I think it really sucks to see Steph fail; even though he’d still be a snake, I thought he could shed his skin.

The bottom line for me is, when you tell someone he has a clean slate, he comes in and does everything asked of him, he outplays every guard on the team in preseason within the system you are playing, and then you freeze him out completely (and spin it to look like it was based on the wishes of a bunch of scrubs you call veteran spokespeople,) and refuse to release him so he could qiuickly take his baggage elsewhere, you shouldn’t be too surprised if he doesn’t all of a sudden become a rah-rah team guy when the going gets rough.

I honestly cant imagine the Steph situation being butchered worse than it has been by D’Antoni. Again, I don’t blame Walsh because he has appeared puzzled by D’Antoni’s decisions on more than one occasion.

I side with Marbury and that’s mainly because management has been handling things so poorly.

So perhaps he’ll talk about whether or not he and D’Antoni have been and remain on the same page all along, the status of any potential buyout, etc…

Ben,

I can’t agree with this. Marbury hardly played at all last year because of personal issues (death etc…) and then had season ending surgery.

Why would another team trade anything of value for him or pay him more before seeing how much (if any) game he still had left?

He was scouted throughout pre season because a lot of teams knew he was likely to be bought out or become available via trade. I read multiple newpaper reports where team scouts said they were looking at him and were impressed that he hadn’t lost a step. I think his pre season performance almost certainly enhanced his marketability (for himself and the Knicks).

IMO, it’s how things were handled afterwards that’s debateable. Of course if you think trying to maximize his value was a mistake to begin with and that they should have just worked something out beforehand just avoid this kind of thing, that’s another story.

Eat shit and die, Patrick Henry!

Awesome. That was great.