Beijing is in Love with Stephon Marbury
The Stephon Marbury that America knows is a guy that had to go through growing pains. A guy that disappointed NBA fans when he wanted to be traded closer to his friends and family in New York instead of try to work alongside Kevin Garnett in Minnesota.
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The Marbury that America knows saw an extremely talented basketball player that, for whatever reason, always seemed to get shipped out of town and never stuck with a team long enough to be the cornerstone of the franchise that his talent warranted.
If you let some NBA critics tell it, he alienated franchises and was hard to deal with. Only Marbury and the NBA teams that he played for know the real story.
But, after the And-1 shoe deal and 15 years of service in the NBA, Marbury was not as beloved as he should have been by NBA fans. He is considered a player with Hall of Fame talent that simply could not put it together.
But in China he is getting all the love and admiration that he could have ever dreamed of. In 2011 Marbury led the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association to the CBA Championship.
Then, after falling short the following season, Marbury helped recapture the Championship for the Ducks this year.
Fans passed around photos of Marbury in tears after winning the 2014 Championship. As you will see in the following video, “Starbury” still has plenty of game and put on a show in the Championship this year:
The City of Beijing loves Marbury! So much so that they have a statue of him outside of the MasterCard Center where the Beijing Ducks held their playoff games.
He has also been given a key to the city and was made an honorary citizen. You can’t take the New Yorker out of Marbury either. He’s been seen riding on the Chinese subways eating Chinese food– something that has scored him points with the Chinese media according to an article by Christopher Beam for onerepublic.com.
Now the beloved Marbury has something in Beijing that no NBA player has. A musical about his life.
The play is about two Beijing street performers who play guitar and who are invited to compete on a show that is similar to “American Idol”.
Their lives mirror similar situations that Stephon Marbury went through. There is actually a scene where one of these characters gets a call saying that his father died which is similar to an event that Marbury went through while playing for the New York Knicks.
As the show goes on, a character that wears a gray hood over his head that is similar to Marbury’s likeness makes appearances to give encouraging statements and move the show along until the actual “Starbury” shows up at the end of the show to give his words of wisdom.
According to that same onerepublic.com article, Marbury takes the stage and utters these words to the crowd:
After each line Marbury says in his part, the other actors repeat it in Mandarin.
Marbury has to be humbled and honored by how he has been received in China. Marbury’s story is truly inspirational and shows that no matter what, you can’t give up on yourself and that you never know where in this world you can find your peace and happiness.
You know that Marbury never would have thought in his wildest dreams that he would have found his peace and happiness in Beijing,China.
He told onerepublic.com:
Good for him! What he has created in China seems to be working. He has surely worked hard enough and gone through enough to find the comfort that he has with himself and his life now. You know for a fact that the love Beijing is showing him he is giving back in return.