Plaxico Burress just sent his value plummeting at Wall Street speed, and now the clock officially starts tick, tick, ticking on his Giants career. Only 15 minutes into his five-year contract, Burress spent Monday ensuring he will be traded, his guarantee as rock solid as the Super Bowl prediction he made eight months back.

Will he be gone next year? The year after? The year after that? Only this much is certain: Burress will be dealt before he sees the end of that fresh $35 million deal, the proposition a matter of when, not if.

What a crying shame, too, as Burress could've cornered a piece of a market once owned by fellow promise keepers Joe Namath and Mark Messier. Fans around here forever lionize the stars brash enough to guarantee big-game victories and bold enough to see them through.

But Burress is no longer just the receiver who beat the unbeatable Patriots with his mouth and his hands. He's no longer just the Giant who made Green Bay's Al Harris look like a Pop Warner corner in an NFC title game shaped by weather unfit for a polar bear. He's no longer just a champion who played hurt all season for the sake of an all-for-one, one-for-all cause.

Burress also has revealed himself to be a remarkably selfish and clueless athlete destined to become the Giants' answer to Manny Ramirez.

The Red Sox squeezed two championships out of Ramirez before deciding they could stomach his disruptive ways no more. That's the best the Giants can hope for now, a second title out of Burress before they downsize the receiver and his high-maintenance ways.

Manny being Manny equals Plax being lax. On a conference call with reporters, the reinstated Burress was expected to apologize for failing to show for work Sept. 22 and for forcing the Giants to suspend him for Sunday's 44-6 victory over Seattle.

Instead Burress said that he had no regrets over his insubordinate conduct, that he didn't lose any sleep over his insubordinate conduct, and that he would, in fact, repeat his insubordinate conduct if it meant he again had to take his son to school.

So Burress wouldn't have done anything differently if he had a do-over? "Maybe I would've put a phone call in (to the Giants)," he said. "But that probably would have been the only thing."

On why he didn't inform the Giants he was taking his son to school rather than attend team meetings, Burress said, "I didn't feel any reason to explain to them what happened or why I missed because I don't feel it is really anybody's business."

And then there was this doozy of a Plax post pattern:

"I enjoyed my week off."

That's a wrap, folks. Burress just signed his walking papers, as clearly as Jeremy Shockey did the same. The Giants got second- and fifth-round draft picks from New Orleans for Shockey. By the time they're ready to deal Burress, they'll be lucky to receive a package that good.

The receiver is 31, and if he hasn't matured by now, he never will. If this is how Burress acts after he catches the winning touchdown pass in an epic Super Bowl, and after he's rewarded with a lavish new contract, what will become of him when the Sunday scoreboard isn't so kind?

Burress has a quarterback who loves throwing him the ball. He tells confidants how much the Giants' uniform means to him, and he wears a number, 17, to mark his March 17, 2005 free-agent signing with the team that was willing to junk the final three years of that deal to give its Super Bowl hero a raise.

But his off-field actions speak as loudly as his game-day play. Burress has been fined dozens of times for tardiness and other garden variety infractions of Tom Coughlin's rules. "Does it really bother me or affect me?" Burress said of the fines. "No."

Coughlin's been fighting this war since the hour Burress arrived from Pittsburgh, where holdovers in the Steelers' front office are busy laughing over this. When Burress repeatedly pulled himself out of practice, a flustered Coughlin approached Tiki Barber and asked the running back what he should do about it.

The coach still is trying to manage the unmanageable. On his own conference call Monday, Coughlin grew irritated when the questions focused on Burress and not on the 38-point beating the Burress-less Giants gave the Seahawks the day before.

Coughlin won't suffer this folly for much longer. Burress might've met all of his requirements when he returned to Giants Stadium, running and lifting with his teammates and meeting with his coach.

But Coughlin surely didn't warm to his receiver's first public comments since going AWOL. As the Giants' card-carrying rebel without a cause, Burress struck his best defiant pose, announcing to all that he didn't care what his employers, teammates or media critics thought of his acts of non-contrition.

He wouldn't explain how a morning drive to his son's school qualified as a family emergency, or as a reason to miss a day of work without the simple courtesy of a heads-up call. Again, it was just Plax being lax.

Whatever. Burress is free to return to the field and play with the full force of his all-everything talent.

At some point — maybe sooner, maybe later — the Giants will give him the Shockey treatment to harden their commitment to a selfless approach.

They only hope to win a second ring before deciding the pain is no longer worth the gain.