Kidd, Marbury Latest Big Deal

In a league filled with owners trying to rebuild, reload or unload salaries to avoid the coming luxury tax, the NBA stars keep falling.

The latest to go were the Phoenix Suns’ Jason Kidd and the New Jersey Nets’ Stephon Marbury, exchanged Thursday in a swap of superstar point guards. The deal can’t be made officially until July 18, when another player or two will be added to satisfy salary cap rules, but the teams announced it anyway.

Kidd and Marbury thus joined a list of such celebrated players as Elton Brand, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Mike Bibby and Jason Williams, who were all traded within three days.

Meanwhile, the Seattle SuperSonics are still expected to move their star point guard, Gary Payton, as well as forward Vin Baker, and the Nets are trying to unload once-heralded Keith Van Horn.

Kidd played the last four seasons in Phoenix, making the all-star team every year the game was held and twice was a first-team All-NBA selection.

He and Penny Hardaway, acquired before the 1999-2000 season, were supposed to be “Backcourt 2000,” leading the Suns back to the success they enjoyed in the ‘90s with Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson.

They made the Suns a 50-win team again but, pitted against bigger, better teams in Los Angeles, San Antonio and Portland, they never got past the second round of the playoffs while Kidd was there.

Last season, the Suns won 53 games, tying them for fourth in the Western Conference, but Kidd suffered a late-season ankle injury. He came limping bravely back after surgery, only to see the Lakers put them away in a five-game second-round playoff series.

This season, Hardaway played only four games. The Suns still managed to win 51 games but were eliminated by Sacramento in a four-game first-round playoff series.

Also, in a crushing blow to the team’s image, Kidd was arrested for striking his wife, Joumana. This was only one of several incidents involving Sun players, including Hardaway, who was accused, though never charged, of menacing his girlfriend with a pistol. This dismayed Sun owner Jerry Colangelo, who is active in domestic abuse causes.

Nor was Marbury’s experience in New Jersey what he’d been hoping for, either.

A Coney Island native, he played his first two seasons in Minnesota then demanded a trade back to the East Coast, crushed in part by the fact that new salary cap rules prevented him from matching the $126-million contract that his Timberwolves teammate Kevin Garnett got.

Expected to turn the Nets around, Marbury wound up going down with them.

They lost 51 and 56 games in his two full seasons there. He made little secret of his low opinion of his struggling teammate Van Horn and fired David Falk, the agent who got him out of Minnesota. Despite averaging 20 points a game for his first five seasons in the league, Marbury didn’t become an all-star until this season and lost all of his endorsement deals.

Aware the team was shopping him in recent days, Marbury made no attempt to hide his eagerness to leave, although he was polite enough to couch it in terms of what was best for the team.

Marbury, 24, is the more explosive scorer of the two point guards, which will come in handy in Phoenix, with Hardaway and Tom Gugliotta coming off injuries and shadows of their old selves.

Kidd, 28, is generally considered the best playmaker of his era, so the Nets may be a happier group, although their transition continues.

Net General Manager Rod Thorn, who just traded the No. 7 pick in the draft, Seton Hall’s Eddie Griffin, for three lower picks, has told other general managers he is under orders to move Van Horn too.

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Trading Places

New Jersey traded Stephon Marbury to Phoenix for Jason Kidd. Their statistics:

STEPHON MARBURY

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FG% FT% 3PT% Reb Ast Pts 2000-01 .441 .790 .328 3.2 7.6 23.9 Career .426 .774 .324 2.0 8.2 20.0

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JASON KIDD

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FG% FT% 3PT% Reb Ast Pts 2000-01 .411 .814 .297 6.4 9.8 16.9 Career .405 .756 .323 6.2 9.4 14.1

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