Now is not the time for selfish athletes

In the suburbs of Detroit, where so many people are spending the holidays worrying about their financial futures, Allen Iverson awoke on Thanksgiving morning and decided he didn't want to go to work.

In New York, where Wall Street has been sucker punching investors, Stephon Marbury sat at the end of the New York Knicks' bench marinating in an ugly, public dust-up with new coach Mike D'Antoni.

The NBA: Where Unhappiness Happens.

And, in Manhattan last Friday night, while his New York Giants teammates were preparing for an important Sunday game in Washington, wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who was going to miss the game with a tender hamstring, shot himself in the thigh.

"Plaxico Burress is a role model and he's let down the young people with his nightclub, self-shooting antics," comedian Jon Stewart joked on Monday's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."

This autumn the disconnect between players and their fans seems greater than ever.

The economy is crashing all around us, but some high-profile athletes aren't getting the message.

It's time they pay attention.

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is making deep cuts in the state's budget. California is going broke.

The leaders of the automobile industry are going back to Washington, D.C., to ask for a government bailout. And JPMorgan Chase announced the layoff of almost 3,400 Washington Mutual workers in Seattle.

And, all the while, too many professional athletes act as if they don't get it. In the face of this dramatic downturn, they can't appreciate their good fortune.

Imagine the reaction of a GM worker, who isn't sure he'll have a job in 2009, who can't afford to take his family to a Pistons game, when he hears Iverson complain about coach Michael Curry's mandatory Thanksgiving practice.

Imagine a Knicks or Giants fan, who is scrambling to find the money to make this month's mortgage payment, watching Marbury sulk in silk at a Knicks game, or seeing Burress, his arms handcuffed behind his back, on his way to being arraigned on gun charges.

Sports fans are watching. And sports fans are hurting. This latest run of the knuckleheads is different from all of the others because of its timing.

People are getting laid off or bought out in frightening numbers. Nonprofit organizations that provide necessary assistance for the most vulnerable people in the community are struggling to raise funds and stay alive.

Services are being cut, schools are hurting and nobody's really in the mood to listen to, or read about, the "troubles" of multimillionaire athletes.

Earlier this season, Burress missed a team meeting and was suspended for New York's game against the Seahawks. And when he returned to the team, he showed no remorse. In fact, he acted as if he were coming off a much-needed vacation.

He was fined $117,500 for that incident, fined $45,000 for verbally abusing an official later that month and fined $25,000 last June for missing a mandatory practice.

Marbury, who, minus about $400,000 in fines, is making $21 million this season, has been ordered, by the team, to stay away from the Knicks. He has called his relationship with D'Antoni a "bad marriage" and has become a distraction to a team that is trying to pull itself out of one of the worst stretches in franchise history.

Burress and Marbury have been monumentally selfish. Iverson has been just plain insensitive.

And, during this holiday season, while all of us search for cheaper gifts and look ahead to even more difficult times, Manny Ramirez shops himself as if he were stuck in the 1990s.

In Seattle we're coming off a baseball season where too many players acted as if the games were some kind of punishment and where supposed ace Erik Bedard accepted a $9 million salary while refusing to pitch through even the slightest pain.

Where's the responsibility to the ticket-buying public? Where's the empathy for a nation of sports fans who are feeling unprecedented pain?

American sports' big leagues — the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB — are heading for a fall. Fans are growing weary of the knuckleheads.

And the players need to get the message.

In the same kind of no-nonsense language that American workers are hearing on an almost-daily basis, players should be informed of the seriousness of this economic crisis.

They should be told to wise up and calm down.

Nobody cares that Iverson had to postpone his turkey dinner. Or that Marbury lost his starting job to Chris Duhon. Or that Burress' arrest was as public as his Super Bowl-winning catch.

Fans are looking for a little responsibility from their millionaire athletes, maybe even a little sympathy.

The troubles of the knuckleheads aren't funny any more.