Marbury: I Could Help Isiah Pay Fines

Somehow, Stephon Marbury is ending his season on a high note. The Knicks may still miss the playoffs, but Starbury is dangerously close to being a star again. According to Newsday's Alan Hahn, the point guards numbers have taken a very encouraging jump:

In 19 games since late February, when the injuries started taking its toll on the team, Marbury has averaged 23.4 points and has taken almost six more shots per game than he did in his first 54 games of the season, when he averaged 14.1 points. His shooting percentage is up from 40.8 percent in his first 54 games to 42.9 percent in the last 19. Marbury has taken almost five more three-pointers per game in the last 19 games, and his percentage from three-point range has improved from 33.9 percent to 38.5 percent. He is averaging 42.05 minutes per game in the last 19, which is almost seven minutes per game more than he had been playing.

That's nice and all, even if, as Hahn notes, these trends may be responsible for Eddy Curry's slump. Marbury is also getting some of that old swagger back, as evidenced by his reaction to Isiah's recent fines:

Stephon Marbury said it "would be nothing" to help Knicks coach Isiah Thomas pay the $50,000 fine levied on him by the NBA for comments Thomas made on Marbury's behalf.

Okay, maybe he's kidding, but this can't make the NBA happy. There's a reason why fines are sometimes levied against individuals, and sometimes against teams; it's so that individual will clearly bear the responsibility for his actions. If Marbury is offering to chip in on Thomas's behalf, even in jest, this kind of undermines the whole point of individual fines. It should be interesting to see if I'm just taking this way too seriously.