The New York Football Giants welcomed Plaxico back to their facilities today in order to continue healing his hamstring injury (and one must assume another, different leg injury) even though he shot himself at a nightclub in Midtown Manhattan with an unlicensed (and very illegal) concealed weapon that he was carrying in the waistband of his pants on Friday night after repeatedly flouting team rules throughout the season while Stephon Marbury has finally been banished from the Knickerbockers altogether (after being relegated to the sidelines to start the season) even though he reported to training camp on time, in peak condition and said all the right things about coming off the bench?
Is that what these headlines over at ESPN.com really mean?
That the Giants are sticking by their player as the season turns towards the playoffs even though he faces serious jail time for a crime with strict mandatory sentencing laws while the Walsh/D'Antoni regime preemptively benched the best player on the roster to start the season in spite of him doing everything they asked leading up to the opening game and not being a person of interest to local law enforcement? And, nobody is saying this is a ridiculous double standard?
And, let me say it plain, I don't think the Knicks can or should welcome Marbury back at this point. He needs to be bought out of his contract sooner than possible and all parties need to move on. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't think the double standard in the way that NBA players are treated in the media is completely unfair as compared to their colleagues in the NFL. The NFL regularly gets a pass on steroids and criminal activity from the same people who will gladly tear apart other pro circuits for identical transgressions.
In fact, they'll tear apart NBA players for far less.
Marbury's time in New York will not be remembered fondly, no doubt about that. But his biggest crime is being overpaid the same as most ballplayers are overpaid and more associated with Isiah Thomas than his teammates. In other words, his crime is not an actual crime. He didn't carry an unlicensed gun into a nightclub. He didn't take ill-gotten performance enhancing drugs to cheat the record books. In fact, off the court Steph was taking a stand against high-priced shoes and the gun crime they cause among kids while making face time for those less fortunate without having to have a NBA Cares television crew filming his every move.
Yet today he is banished. While Plaxico was welcomed back to the Giants facility. And, let me get this right...we're all OK with this being the way things are? We're all OK with the fact that just a few minutes of talk radio will make clear that Steph is as least as much of a pariah as Plax in this town?
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