Sam Rubenstein

“You take a $200 shoe and take my shoe, cut it in half and it’s the same shoe.”

First of all… I can’t believe this youtube video exists. Steph on Regis & Kelly? Who are you ezesports and why?!?

Well, Stephon Marbury is selling shoes at reasonable prices. This is the first thing he’s done in a long time that I wholeheartedly support. I want to like Stephon just as much as everyone else at SLAM. I have absolutely no relationship (NH NH NH!!!) with him of any kind, and I know that if I were to drop dead at my desk right now, he wouldn’t care. But still, I want to like him.

Me and him are both from Brooklyn, and we were in high school at the same time. Of course he went to a school that had a competitive basketball team playing for the city championship and my school’s league was more about having parents in the crowd and our biggest celebrity ever in the gym was a coach who once played for the Washington Generals. Or so he said… crazy old man. Also, Steph is from south Brooklyn and I’m from way north. When my friends talked about going to Coney Island to watch him play, I was like “Coney Island? Isn’t that an amusement park? Isn’t that a 2 hour train ride?” I was sort of right, but grossly mis-informed.

I always liked Steph as a player, though he wasn’t exactly Mr. Clutch. He did hit that tear drop buzzer-beater against the Spurs when he was with Phoenix, but the final shot he took at Georgia Tech with an NCAA tourney game on the line was pretty awful. He’s also the master of the “fake jump shot, no, it’s a no-look pass” which is an interesting strategy. He pulled that move when the Knicks were down 2-0 to the Nets in his one playoff appearance as a Knick so far. Despite all that, when he came to the Knicks I couldn’t have been happier. Lang published an email I sent him in the Links when I said something to the effect of “Isiah is a genius! This is the best trade since the white man stole manhattan from the Native Americans!!!”

Things have sort of gone ever so slightly downhill from that point. I want things to turn out well for Steph and the Knicks. Maybe his uncomfortable father-son relationship with Isiah will lead to the best ball of his life. If I were to make excuses I could point out that the Knicks did have a 6 game winning streak with Steph playing phenomenal ball, until Wally got him with a hip check. Shortly thereafter, the season was in the crapper. But I’m not making excuses right now.

All I know is that when he says “I’m predicting a big season”, I can hope that he is right, but expectations are low. Do I laugh when people call him Cancerbury? Of course. Was I chanting “Steph’s a can-cer” at the selltheknicks.com march? There’s no evidence to prove that. But now, even those of you who think that Stephon Marbury is everything that is wrong with the NBA, you have to admit that this discount shoe thing is a great idea.

Yes, a positive Steph post that you can’t really get mad at.