COMMENTARY : Urban Legend Now Rated Sensational, Soon To Be Great

‘Stephon! Steph-ON! STEPHON!!!!!’

One summer day a long time ago, the great Coach Bob Knight sat high in his school’s basketball arena to watch that fall’s freshmen. “There,” Knight said, “is a kid who’ll be the best player I ever had,” and all eyes searched for the object of such praise. When it turned out to be the littlest guy on the floor, someone said, “A 6-foot guard? Your best ever?” Knight said, “Isiah Thomas.”

As always on basketball matters, Knight had it right. Not only did Thomas help Indiana win a national championship, but he helped the Detroit Pistons win two National Basketball Assn.championships, too. He also helped teach basketball a lesson it had forgotten in decades of lust for 7-footers: The best teams take the best care of the ball.

The latest little master of the ball is Stephon Marbury, an urban legend, a New York City kid so good they call him Starbury or, more simply, Future. In the present, he’s a freshman at Georgia Tech averaging 18 points, getting six or seven assists, playing hard defense. The consensus after a month in college is that nothing has changed: He’s sensational now and soon will be great.

Here we are in the first minute of a Georgia Tech game. The coach, Bobby Cremins, is hopping. He’s hopping, and his silver hair is flopping in time with his hopping. His arms are held high and they are flailing, as if he were a marionette manipulated by a mad man. Bobby Cremins also is shouting, and we hear this: “Stephon! Steph-ON! STEPHON!!!!!”

Some minor thing. The coach wanted something done. He wanted the ball here instead of there. The important thing is, Stephon Marbury did it. In high school, Marbury created a pattern of behavior that seemed cocky, selfish and stubborn. Not at Georgia Tech, where his professional education has begun, wisdom shouted into his ear every few seconds by a coach who says:

“Early, Stephon would fight me. He had a struggle with understanding what I wanted him to do. But now he’s coming around. Deep down, he’s a nice kid, and he’s coachable, I can see that now.”

The struggle came out of Marbury’s natural expectation of dominating college games. For now, anyway, Cremins wants Marbury to be content doing less. The coach wants him to give up the ball; take the three-pointer off someone else’s pass; run the offense to involve his teammates.

All this, Marbury can do. The wonder is that he can do it as an 18-year-old kid under constant examination.

The NCAA’s people have interrogated Marbury, his coaches, his family and his friends to see if they’re up to anything in violation of the zillion stupid rules the colleges have created to sustain their cost-cutting lies about amateur competition. So far the NCAA has found nothing.

The media have been relentless. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the cost of a chartered jet that delivered Marbury for a campus visit. Sports Illustrated reported Marbury’s connections with a New York coach famous for his generosity. The Sporting News made Marbury a cover boy of its College Basketball Yearbook and said he was eager to transform his family’s poverty into the riches available to a professional basketball player.

The only question about the NBA is when. After one year at Tech? Kenny Anderson played two seasons for Cremins before leaving (and now is a veteran pro who, if we are to believe him, has turned down a $40 million contract as too little, too late).

Marbury has been consistent in explaining his NBA thinking: He’ll go when he’s ready, and he’ll be ready when he’s one of the draft’s top two or three picks. “If I’m going to go real high, I’ll go,” he says. “But the chances of going high next year are slim. If it takes four years, I’ll stay four years.”

He’d stay until his college basketball education is complete. “I want to learn to run a team,” Marbury says. “I want to be the player who makes everyone else happy. I want guys to want to play with me.”

Marty Blake, the NBA’s director of scouting: “Stephon’s a great, great talent with more potential than Kenny Anderson. To start with, Stephon can shoot. And Kenny’s sort of a selfish player. Still, we’d strongly recommend that Stephon stay in school another year, maybe another two years.”

Pete Babcock, the Atlanta Hawks general manager: “He’s got great talent, but he’s not ready. Ninety-nine% of college players aren’t ready--even ones with four years, let alone one or two.”

Cremins: “I always thought Kenny Anderson was the best dribbler and passer I’d ever seen. But Stephon is an incredible passer. Can he play in the NBA? Absolutely. Can he play in the NBA today? No way. Mentally, he’s not there yet. And it’s my job to get him there.”

Before it’s over at Georgia Tech, Cremins would want Marbury to lead his team in scoring and assists while working as a pure point guard. This season he must share the ball with senior Drew Berry, a circumstance so new to Marbury that even he confesses to confusion at times.

“I hate to lose so much that if we get behind, I’ll do anything to get us going,” Marbury says. As he did in high school at such moments, Marbury wants to have the ball every second. “Here I have to learn to listen to Coach.”

Listening to Bobby Cremins is easily done, especially from a press-row seat 30 feet from the Georgia Tech bench. The other night, a reporter made a mark every time he heard Cremins shout “STEPHON!!!!” When the reporter showed the notebook page to Marbury, the freshman smiled and said, “How many times was it?”

Sixty-seven times.

“And I’m sure you didn’t hear them all,” Marbury said.

Did Marbury hear them all?

“Definitely. Coach Cremins is just trying to get me to the next level.”

Cremins looked at the 67 hen scratches and said he knew what it would mean if he were still calling Marbury’s name 67 times a game a year or two years from now. With a laugh: “I’ll be dead.”