It only figures that Isiah Thomas has a point guard fetish. Not long after assuming the position of Knicks president, the former Detroit Pistons superstar went out and got Moochie Norris from Houston. Then he apparently took the pulse of New York fans, realized that move alone would not cause them to erect a statue in his honor, so he got back on the phone.

The most recent revamp from something you would find on the curb during a New York garbage strike into a club on the lottery bubble or the No. 8 playoff spot in the East also features a point guard on center stage.

Not any point guard, mind you, but Stephon Marbury, who grew up in Brooklyn and who has longed to be back in his rightful place as a linchpin of a bad team on Broadway.

I can’t say that I’m an admirer of Isiah. As a player, he was phenomenal on the court, churlish and bitter off it. As a GM in Toronto and a coach in Indiana, he had mixed success, and he is recalled by Continental Basketball Association fans for his ownership tenure as fondly as Kenneth Lay is remembered for Enron.

But if he can get Marbury and dump a load of salary large enough to make Donald Trump envious, then his hiring becomes the immediate front-runner for the NBA’s “Not Such A Dumb Idea After All” award.

The Phoenix Suns sent Marbury and Penny Hardaway to the Knicks in exchange for Antonio McDyess, Howard Eisley, Charlie Ward, the rights to Milos Vujanic and cash.

Ordinarily, when I hear of a trade that sounds as lopsided as this one, I just assume Danny Ainge is running the club that got the short end. But in this case, the Suns are having a putrid season, they obviously made a New Year’s resolution to pack it in and give it another go in 2004-05, and with that goal in mind, they’re trying to get Stephon and Penny off their books.

The Suns will take on McDyess, who played there before, but his contract expires at the end of the season. Ditto for Charlie Ward, who never lived up to his Heisman hype. Eisley is under contract for three more seasons.

As far as Milos Vujanic is concerned, I have to plead ignorance here. Whenever I hear about the rights to a player from Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Iran, Bali, or some other far-flung locale, and then find out he’s playing overseas right now, his potential is “untapped” and he has not yet been exposed to the grind of the NBA, I figure having his rights is akin to having the mineral rights at Chernobyl.

Losing McDyess is the only sore spot for the Knicks, and it’s apparently not as sore as he is. Acquiring McDyess was the major accomplishment of Isiah’s predecessor, Scott Layden, and when McDyess went down with a bum knee and missed more than a year, there went Layden’s New York dream of being bigger than Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. A healthy McDyess would have been a mainstay at power forward for years. Alas, it looks as though he’ll never be the same, so maybe a trip to the desert will do him good.

This deal will be remembered as the one that put Isiah Thomas’ signature on the New York Knicks.

The club needed salary cap relief, and they’ll apparently get some, since Penny’s contract runs out after this season. Marbury is the keeper.

As you know, New York people like their stars.

Somehow, Eisley, Ward, Clarence Weatherspoon and Kurt Thomas just didn’t do it for them. Allan Houston is a fine player, but he isn’t a neon sign kind of guy. It was fine when they had Latrell Sprewell, because he played with panache. But he and Knicks CEO James Dolan had a falling-out over character issues, which Latrell tried to dispel on a recent visit with his new team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, when he directed vile and obscene language toward a courtside Dolan with kids within earshot. I guess you have to let a guy turn over a new leaf at his own pace.

Marbury is averaging over 20 points a game. He can shoot from the outside. He can drive to the hole with incredible effectiveness, and also with the flamboyance needed to excite the glitterati who pay silly sums of money for seats. He can defend. He can pass. Heck, he can even lead.

And you know he’ll be content, because New York is where he has always wanted to be. He once got as close as the New Jersey Nets, but Manhattan has numerous restaurants, clubs, theaters and points of cultural interest, while the Meadowlands feature a less seductive mixture of swamps and pavement.

Of course, there is a downside. I’m always skeptical of a player who has lots of stickers on his suitcase. This will be the fourth time the 27-year-old Marbury has been traded in his career. In one instance, while a member of the T-Wolves, he became so obsessed with the money teammate Kevin Garnett was making that he threw a tantrum and demanded his walking papers. It’s unlikely he’ll become a nuisance on his hometown franchise, but then again, the behavior wouldn’t be unprecedented.

Then you wonder if maybe being around the old haunts is a good thing. He once came out of a New York club at 4 in the morning, stopped his Bentley at a light, and had six figures worth of bling-bling stolen from him at gunpoint. And that was while he was a Net. Imagine how the temptations for late-night meanderings might multiply while playing right there on 33rd and Seventh Avenue.

But that’s really beside the point.

Isiah Thomas got a directive from Dolan to make the ugliness on the court go away, to get the club’s financial house in order while putting together a playoff contender in the process. With this trade, he will be well on his way.

Yet let’s hope Isiah doesn’t take this idea of remodeling the team in his image too far by going out and trading Dikembe Mutombo for Earl Boykins, or Keith Van Horn for Derek Fisher. He made a good deal for Marbury. Any more point guards would just dwarf that accomplishment.

MORE FROM ATLANTIC (BOS, NJ, NY, PHI, TOR)

Knicks pass on Iverson, want to stay young

Knicks pass on Iverson, want to stay young 76ers' Speights out 6 to 8 weeks with knee injury PFT: Celtics’ Big Baby wants to play football   Add Atlantic (Bos, NJ, NY, Phi, Tor) headlines to your news reader: