<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Question: How many Hall of Famers does it take to fix a Knicks point guard? In his nearly three-year tenure with his hometown club, Stephon Marbury has worked under Hall of Fame coaches - and point guards - Lenny Wilkens and Larry Brown. Both were run out of town before their contracts ran out. Isiah Thomas - a Hall of Famer as a point guard, though certainly not as a coach - has tried his hand with the mercurial Marbury this season and even invited all-time great Magic Johnson in for a tutorial earlier this month. None of the lessons seemed to make much of a difference as Marbury continued to mope through much of the first two months of the season. But something seems to have changed over the past few games for the Brooklyn product, culminating in Wednesday's 151-145 triple-overtime win over the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons. And it had nothing to do with an earful of advice from yet another Hall of Famer. Marbury scored a season-high 41 points against the Pistons, his highest total in 21 months. He also hit for 31 in the basket-brawl against Denver on Dec. 16 and followed that with a 29-point effort - and last-second game-winning lay-up - in the Knicks' OT win over Utah on Dec. 18. "I just let the game come to me. I knew eventually it would come around to me," Marbury said after Wednesday's win. "I just had to be patient. I didn't allow the game to get the best of me." Marbury and the Knicks, who have won four of their past five games, will be out to prove their improved play isn't just a mirage when they travel to the desert tonight to play the Pacific Division-leading Phoenix Suns, the team that dealt Marbury to the Knicks in January 2004. The Suns game is the first of a five-game West Coast swing in which the Knicks (13-18) will celebrate New Year's Eve early with a matinee against the Los Angeles Clippers, then travel to Sacramento, Portland and Seattle. The last four opponents on the trip all have losing records. "We've been playing well lately," said forward Jared Jeffries, who returned from a four-game suspension on Wednesday. "We just have to build on it when we go out West."</div> Source
