Stephon Marbury gets made fun of a lot.
Once a star point guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, New Jersey Nets and Phoenix Suns, things got a little weird when he ended up in NYC to play for the Knicks at the start of the 2004-2005 NBA season. He feuded with head coach Larry Brown, then feuded with his successor, Isiah Thomas. The Knicks were atrocious, posting a losing record in each of the four seasons Marbury played in the Big Apple.
Then there was Marbury's now infamous "Vaseline" video that he live-streamed in 2009, in which the point guard, sitting shirtless in his bed, rambles on about Drake and free advertising before consuming a handful of vaseline to cure his sore throat. He would then later appear listening to music and sobbing. No one had any idea what to make of it, and just assumed "Starbury" had lost his damn mind. Turns out, Marbury's mental issues were much more serious than that.
Dealing with the collapse of his NBA career, the dysfunction within the Knicks, the lack of success with his "Starbury" brand and the death of his father pushed Marbury to the breaking point. In an HBO Real Sports segment set to air Jan. 20, Marbury says he was clinically depressed during the time of the aforementioned video and was having suicidal thoughts.
"It was basically losing life slowly," Marbury told HBO Real Sports. "And I was watching it. And I think that was hurting me more than seeing my basketball career going in the direction that it was going. ... I was trapped in my thoughts. I was trapped in how I felt about how I felt I was treated. I was trapped with decisions that I made."
Marbury also admits that his will to live had dissipated.
"I wanted to die," he says. "I wanted to kill myself some days. I did. ... It wasn't about basketball. It started to become about me. Because I was that depressed and I was that sick.”
Marbury has since found some redemption playing for the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association, where he's won two championships, averaged 45 points per game during a playoff series in 2012, and had a statue built of himself.
Here's to hoping Marbury continues to recover from what he refers to as the rock bottom part of his life.
[Via SI]
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