The most fun Stephon Marbury ever had playing alongside Kevin Garnett, he said, came only three weeks before he decided he couldn't stand it anymore and had to leave the Timberwolves for good.
"Me and Kevin, we just dominated that game," Marbury said last week, sitting in the visitors' locker room at the United Center in Chicago. Marbury and his new teammates, the New Jersey Nets, were getting ready for a game against the Bulls. But at the moment, his mind was on an old teammate and the game they played against Houston on Feb. 17 at Target Center.Marbury scored a career-high 40 points -- no wonder he savored the memory, eh? -- and Garnett scored 23 and came within one rebound and one assist of a triple-double.
"It felt like we were just out there by ourselves," Marbury said. "Kevin and I were running pick-and-rolls, I was passing to him, he was dunking. I was coming off screens, wide open; he was setting unbelievable screens. That game was probably the highlight of everything me and Kevin did. We were a 1-2 punch that game, and that's what people wanted to see.
"But things just changed."
No fooling. Garnett still is with the Wolves, trying to pick up the pieces after Marbury forced a trade to New Jersey. His old team, after a 12-6 start, has nose-dived to 2-6 since Marbury left.
The Nets have been just as bad. They were 3-15 when Marbury arrived, and 2-4 since. Yet Marbury, to see and hear him, seems content.
Contrary to a few wishful-thinking reports from within the Wolves that he already regrets his decision -- Marbury changes his mind the way some folks change lanes -- he is glad to be back East. And out of Minnesota.
"No one will ever make me feel discouraged about that," Marbury said. "I get to see my daughter every day. No one will be able to tell me how that feels . . . I get to see my mom. All my brothers, my nephews, my cousins. I don't know too many people who wouldn't want to be in that situation.
"By me being around my family, that helps me. That's energy for me."
Not that Minnesota will fade from Marbury's memory anytime soon. Already he sees it as a place where he grew up some, developing a mental toughness from some injuries his rookie season and, get this: from the snow and cold.
Marbury said he has no gripes about the comments coming out of the Twin Cities about his play or his priorities.
"I'm not mad at Kevin McHale," he said. "I understand the frustration of building a team and then, all of a sudden, you have it dismantled. He looked like the best GM in the world, and now it makes him look like the worst GM in the world."
Marbury also scoffs at notions of a rivalry with Garnett, who still considers Marbury his friend.
"Things were good between me and Kevin," Marbury said. "Why would I be jealous? What am I going to be jealous of if, at the end of the game, I'm the person in the situation to take the last shot?"
Back in Minnesota, Garnett admits it's sad to think about what might have been.
"We were never in 'competition,' " Garnett said. "What I meant by that was, we're both winners. If you have two winners, someone has to lose. Not necessarily lose, but someone has to give."
Not any more. Marbury, now the highest paid 22-year-old on his team, is playing only a tunnel and a couple of freeways away from the Coney Island neighborhood he grew up in. With talented players such as Keith Van Horn, Jayson Williams and Kerry Kittles around him, the basketball surely will improve.
Still, what what about misgivings over surrendering such a promising and potentially rewarding professional relation with Garnett and the Timberwolves?
"We definitely would have been one of the best tandems ever," Marbury acknowledges of himself and Garnett. "But God didn't want that, so that's not what it is."