The Knicks defeated the Nets by a final score of 111-97 on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.  There were no boos from the small crowd for Isiah Thomas and the players enjoyed playing for him.

"By far," Marbury said, when asked if the team has more freedom under Thomas than they did with Larry Brown. "It's not even close.

"Now you can just go out and play basketball and do what you do on the basketball court. It's not thinking about trying to make the right play. It's just playing basketball. Basketball is a thinking man's game; it's not a game where you can go on the court and say, 'Oh, okay, well, I'm supposed to do this, and if I do this, then this is going to happen.' It doesn't work that way."