Larry Buries Stephon

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">"We're 17 and 45. You want to say because we don't have freedom that's why we're losing?" Brown said yesterday after a brief practice in Greenburgh and well after Marbury had left the building. "That's fine, you can say that all you want. But the reality is, we foul more than any team in the league, since the fifth week of the season we're the second-worst field-goal percentage defensive team in the league, we turn the ball over more than any team in the league, we're close to the fewest blocked shots of any team in the league.

"Now you want freedom? How are you gonna have freedom with those stats?"

On Saturday, Marbury said that because the Knicks weren't winning many games, he planned to "go back to playing like Stephon Marbury, aka Starbury."

"That means, 'I ain't thinking about all those things that really are relevant. I ain't thinking about any of those things,'" Brown said yesterday.

The relationship between Brown, a former point guard, and Marbury, who has never taken a team to the second round of the playoffs, seems to have degenerated to the point of no repair. Of course, that very well may be what Brown is aiming at by stoking the fire of the feud; it's clear Brown isn't happy coaching Isiah Thomas' centerpiece acquisition, and he's helped to create a situation in which one of them will probably have to go.

Brown, whose Knicks play host to less-awful Atlanta tonight, said he had no plans to seek out Marbury for a chat. The coach and point guard have been on and off speaking terms all season, and they seem to prefer communicating with one another through reporters.

Brown has had run-ins with players before, notably with Allen Iverson in Philadelphia. But Brown stressed yesterday that he and Iverson never had issues "on the court," and the coach went on at length about what Iverson did well - essentially counting all the ways Marbury fails to measure up.

"He came to every game trying to win, as hard as he possibly could," Brown said of A.I. "Played hurt, broken down, competed every single night, and we had a team around him that accepted what he could do. And they all knew that every single night he's trying to win the game. ... He competed every single minute of every game."

Is it possible even to imagine Brown volunteering similar praise of Marbury?

After the Knicks beat Milwaukee last week, Marbury complained that "we're still trying to figure out what we're supposed to do on the basketball court." That, to the Hall of Fame coach, is the player's problem.

"I've been coaching how many years? A long time," Brown said. "I never left a team in worse shape than I got it. Not once. Now think about that. Think about me and think about the guy who's talking. All right? I've never asked anything of my players any different than I'm doing right now. Think about that.

"The bottom line is, I want us to rebound, defend, share the ball, play hard. That's all. Now if you can't do that, if that's not important enough to you, it's not on me." </div>

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