Without Isiah Thomas on hand to absorb scorn, Stephon Marbury starred solo at Knicks media day on Monday. A few funny vignettes have come out -- Henry Abbott keys on the idea Marbury is doing everything he can to get cut so he can get some PT and a little more scratch elsewhere, Shoals notes that Starbury's big talk is way better than his game. But what about the other Knicks who are at least trying to move on? Howard Beck of the New York Times talks to Jamal Crawford.
"It's bigger than any one person," Jamal Crawford said at Monday's annual media day. "This shouldn't be our team's focus, is if a person's on the team or not on the team. We have to make the Knicks relevant again. I think that's what we all need to be focused on. ... It's been something every year. So hopefully, everything works itself out. It wears everybody out. It's draining. It's mentally draining. So you just hope the situation gets resolved."
Behind all the humor Starbury offers, he's really still hurting the team he professes to love and killing the players he calls his brothers. At some point, this destructive behavior stops being funny, right? Well, nope ... not if you read further down Beck's story.
"It doesn't matter what you say, it doesn't matter that you called me toxins and that you called me all of these different things," Marbury told the reporter Ken Berger [of Newsday, who referred to Marbury as a "toxic asset" in a recent column]. "That's what you got to live with. It's not me, it's you."
Marbury told Berger he would "teach my kids not to be like you" and said, "I'm just going to pray for you." When the interview was over, Marbury stood up and bear-hugged Berger and said several times, "I'm praying for you, man."
