Stephon Marbury went from being the self-proclaimed “best point guard in the NBA” to playing in Beijing even faster than most point guards went around Marbury’s defense. But Marbury, like the dude he is, abides. Helping the Beijing Ducks to the CBA championship, Marbury endeared himself to millions of Chinese hoops fans. Marbury’s success even indirectly made possible the unlikely fact that he, Stephon Marbury, is no longer the strangest, most self-absorbed American basketball player in China: Metta World Peace followed Marbury to China, and no one anywhere can compete with World Peace for strangeness and self-absorption (in a good way, Metta!).
But World Peace, despite changing his name to the allegedly China-friendly Panda Friend, doesn’t have his own play. Marbury does: he stars in a new musical in China based on his own life. It’s called I Am Marbury. (The New Republic reports this title, though the YouTube video is called I Was Marbury–a pretty heady distinction!) It’s about the journey of Steph from the tough New York hood all the way to Beijing! (Honestly, we’re not sure where the journey ends.) And not just that, it’s about the journey we’re all on. Marbury’s stage soliloquys do not, however, include the one that got him pretty much kicked out of the NBA: To D or not to D, that is the question.
