Marbury Suspended One Game, Knicks Score $400,000

In response to this season's second refusal to play basketball on Wednesday in Detroit, Stephon Marbury has been suspended one game by the Knicks.

"A player's central obligation is to provide his professional services when called upon," team president of basketball operations Donnie Walsh said in the team's announcement. "Because he refused the coach's request to play in the team's last game, we had no choice but to impose disciplinary action."

Marbury has disputed the Knicks' allegation that he refused to play, telling The New York Post: "I never told [coach Mike D'Antoni] I'm not going to play. Those words never came out of my mouth. That's insubordination."

Hal Biagas, an NBA Players' Association attorney advising Marbury, told ESPN.com Friday morning: "We feel the discipline imposed by the Knicks is baseless. We plan to file a grievance."

Meow meow meow. This would be a lot easier if the guy had an agent to hook him up with a deal somewhere else. To make things more interesting we've got this from Quentin Richardson:

“I don’t consider him my teammate, so, I mean, whatever," Quentin Richardson said. "He hasn’t played with us all year, he doesn’t want to play with us. He’s expressed that a second time, so whatever. I don’t look at him as a teammate because teammates don’t do that. Regardless of what you have going on with the organization or what you have going on with your coach or whatever, you’re not going to allow your teammates to be left out there the way they were left out there"

Well, now it's officially too weird to give Steph minutes, so let's get rid of him, shall we? Please? So I can stop hearing about this?