"It's funny," laughs John Nash, who worked for the Sixers then and has been the Nets' general manager for the past five years. "Back in Philly, our owner, Fitz Dixon, wanted to know who this guy Erving was that he should be worth so much money. Pat Williams, the Sixers' GM, told him, 'You have to do it; this guy is the Babe Ruth of basketball.' Pat was right, in more ways than one."

Then Nash, who once suffered through a 9-73 season in Philly, swore up and down, as does everyone from Willis Reed (former Net coach and VP since 1990) to Larry Brown (who left the team in the lurch late in the rare winning season of 1983), that -- even if the Nets almost always lead the league in injuries (272 games lost last year), and even if the team's first-round pick in 1994, Yinka Dare, took only one shot all season and it was an air ball, and even if, in 1987, the club picked Dennis Hopson over Scottie Pippen, Kevin Johnson, Derrick McKey, Horace Grant, Reggie Miller, and Mark Jackson -- there is no such thing as the Curse of the Nets.

"I'm a believer in the law of averages," said Nash, who a few days later learned that he would be relieved of his GM duties at season's end. "Things going badly eventually will go better. It's cyclical. It is just the length of these cycles -- that's what concerns me."

When it comes to the alleged Net curse, no one would expect Stephon Marbury to keep afflicted chapter and verse on wackos like Chris Morris (who wouldn't tie his shoelaces), but the Coney Island flash might take note of the dark fate of other fabulous New York City point guards who ran afoul of whatever lurks in the swamps of Jersey. For those who cherish the magic of the schoolyard transmuted to the big stage, few Nets moments could be worse than witnessing the great Nate "Tiny" Archibald, the De Witt Clinton master, blow out his foot in the middle of the '76-77 season. Playing for the wandering Kansas City-Omaha Kings, Tiny led the league in both scoring and assists in the same year. Yet it took only 34 games back "home" with the Nets to steal his first step for all time.

Also depressing was the demise of Dwayne "Pearl" Washington, all-timer at Boys High, unstoppable at Syracuse, who became a pudgy little guy when the Nets took him in the first round, bouncing the ball off his foot for two seasons. Then there is the troubling matter of Kenny Anderson, of Archbishop Molloy in Queens, the most legendarily beloved of New York City ballhandlers.

A first-round pick in 1991, Anderson lasted four seasons here, even making the All-Star team during the Chuck Daly years. But it was downhill after that. Anderson is still around, kind of, playing for the Celtics. (In typical Netology, Milton Palacio was subbing for K.A. when he hit his shot.) Always scrawny, Anderson looks these days like a Calista Flockhart knockoff in his Kelly-green uniform.

So, even as Marbury sank two three-pointers to win the 2001 All-Star game, fans wondered: What does the Curse have in store for Stephon, potentially the greatest of NYC court sorcerers?

Able to squat-press 600 pounds ("He's one of the five strongest guys in the league, pound for pound," says Nets strength coach Rich Dalatri), Stephon isn't going to waste away like Kenny Anderson. Still, Marbury has five more years on his contract, which could take him to the opening of the Nets' long-promised downtown-Newark arena, a city-renewing venue change that is probably the team's best shot at karmic redemption. But five years is a long time in the NBA, a Joycean eternity amid the mists of loss, even for a talent as adeptly Daedalusian as Stephon's. That's five more years of having to do too much for a likely undertalented team, five more years of getting his body banged around, five more years of the Curse.

"Curse of the Nets . . . curse of Frankenstein," Stephon Marbury remarked in front of his locker a couple of days after the Palacio game. Intermittently friendly and distant with press guys, Marbury was in a pretty good mood, looking forward to that evening's (brutally losing) matchup with the Orlando Magic. In his hand he held a Stephon Marbury Bobble Head Doll, a bulbous likeness of the ballplayer's noggin swiveling on a torso bearing his No. 33. The Nets will give out thousands as a promotion, and Marbury, whose face the team has plastered on half the billboards in North Jersey, held the doll upside down, shaking it like a drumstick as he spoke.

Sure, Stephon noted, he believed in luck. Luck "controlled a lot," he said, mordantly adding, "so what kind of luck you think we got?" But as for curses, the star shook his head: "That's silly."

It was then that the top flew off the Stephon Marbury Bobble Head Doll. It shot straight up in the air before bouncing across the locker floor, where it rolled to a stop in front of Kenyon Martin's cubicle. Marbury looked down at the headless figure of himself resting on his open palm.

"Damn," he said.

"The curse. Curse of the nets? Old Roy Boe, where did you go?" said Julius Erving. Now a vice-president for the Magic, Erving was in New York when the team came up to play the Knicks. I'd gone over to the Garden hoping to run into him (significantly or not, Erving did not show the next week in Jersey, even though his old No. 32 hangs from the rafters), and there he was: in a tan cashmere coat and hat, the incomparable Doc, greeting half the building, including several Knicks who seemed genuinely tickled to stand so close to the sainted hoop paragon.

Concurring that, with the possible exception of Buck Williams, Stephon Marbury was the best Net since himself, Erving said it wasn't fair to say his old team was cursed because Roy Boe sold him down the turnpike for $3 million.

"I'm no Babe Ruth. I'm a much skinnier guy! Don't make me responsible for any voodoo."

Julius shook his head. "The Nets, oh, the Nets. Lots of times, I thought they were going to turn the corner. But something always happened. Somebody went down. Someone quit. A funny bounce."

Then someone was asking about the old ABA Nets, who played and won at the Nassau Coliseum, near where Erving grew up in Roosevelt, one more local guy starring for the home team. And how great was that -- plying the lonely Long Island parkways, a hoops pilgrim going to see an Afro-headed angel named Doc fly spread-eagle through the air with a red-white-and-blue ball?

"Those are good memories," Doc said softly. "Some memories you hold on to, and some -- they're just better if you let them go." That got to the heart of it, right there, since Erving was clearly talking about the unspeakable horror that overtook his seemingly charmed life when his missing, troubled son Corry was found drowned last year in a Central Florida pond. The game was about to begin, music blaring, but the Doctor seemed lost in thought even as Donald Trump pushed through the Garden crowd to shake his hand. It got to me.