Brown-Marbury Feud Renews Faith in Karma

Larry Brown and Stephon Marbury feasting on each other’s liver is one of those stories that renews your faith in karma. The only way it could possibly get better is if Isiah Thomas dropped by and demanded a table for three.

If you want to know what’s wrong with pro basketball today, just change the channel to the NCAA tournament. The individual skill level is much lower, but the sum of those parts turns out to be a lot more entertaining. There’s more effort, more movement at both ends of the floor, less posing and preening and since Bobby Knight slipped into semiretirement, almost none of the personality clashes that have turned the Knicks into an NBA laughingstock.

Brown has traveled extensively throughout the game’s pro, college and international orbits, Marbury considerably less so. He’s not quite half as old as his venerable coach -- 29 vs. 65 -- and he only spent one season at Georgia Tech before choosing to play for pay. A side-by-side review of their resume reveals a wide gulf in experience, but the same job description: mercenary. That’s the reason they’re so good at tearing into each other -- because they’ve both had plenty of practice at all those previous stops.

Before New York, the last place Brown and Marbury collided was at the 2004 Summer Games. Everybody remembered how that went except, apparently, for the principals and Thomas, who was only too happy to become boss, enabler and third leg of this vicious little triangle.

To review: After just about every Olympic game in Athens, Brown stood outside USA Basketball’s locker room and ripped his team for refusing to play like one. And more often than not, he reserved most of the blame for his point guard, whose role was central to carrying out the game plan and whose primary job, according to Brown, was to protect the ball and distribute it smartly. And Marbury, who was that point guard a fair share of the time, continued to play as if the only smart shots were the ones that he put up.

Now fast forward to last July and Brown’s messy homecoming to New York. He said he was walking away from a coaching job in Detroit because of uncertainty about his health, despite winning one championship and losing a second in Game 7 of the finals in consecutive seasons. But soon after Thomas slid a four-year deal for $8 million per under his nose, Brown started feeling much better.

The marquee outside Madison Square Garden flashed “Welcome Back Larry!” the day he returned, and Brown managed to keep a straight face throughout, describing it as a “dream job” and the “single greatest honor” of his long and storied career.

“Basketball started for me in this city,” Brown said at the time, “and I want to be here when it’s finally time for me to stop.”

And somewhere nearby, no doubt soon after the news of the hiring reached him, Marbury started hatching a plot to avenge himself as “Starbury,” practicing his off-balance, back-to-the-basket, half-court heave and muttering under his breath, “How do you like me now?”

Nothing much has changed since. The Knicks still stink, largely because Brown and Marbury will never be on the same page -- unless you count the New York tabloids -- and the franchise is cash-strapped for the foreseeable future because Thomas has no idea how to run an organization, let alone his own front office.

But when your coach and your star are swapping insults, matching records and asking people to choose sides daily, even a boss as distracted as Thomas happens to be at the moment will have to act. He’ll find a way to move Marbury out of town eventually, but all the aggravation in the meantime is exactly what all three of them so richly deserve.

And if that isn’t karma enough, guess who arrived Friday night in New York to hang another “L” on the Knicks? How about the same unselfish Pistons squad that Brown first schooled and then abandoned. And how perfect is that?

Because what better way to remind Brown that the one time he makes a decision based on some personal code of honor -- to come back home, stay in one place, mold one more team, and glean enough satisfaction to honorably call it a career -- it backfires because he wound up depending on two guys who care even less about loyalty than he ever did.