Stephon Marbury realizes he’ll never be allowed to play for Team China, which competed at the Garden this weekend in World Championship tune-up games. China’s national-team guidelines are pretty strict, despite Marbury’s three-year commitment to play professionally there.
But Marbury’s got a bigger goal: to one day own a team in the Chinese Basketball Association.
Marbury, the former Lincoln superstar out of Coney Island, is all-in on his investment in China, citing the 350 million people who play basketball there and the country last week leaping past Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy.
“The NBA has deals to build arenas in China,” Marbury told The Post. “It just takes time. Owning and investing there, how can I go wrong business-wise?”
Marbury signed a three-year deal to play again for Shanxi that includes a coaching stint starting next season. The most important part of the deal is his club will finance the opening of three Starbury stores in the city.
“It’s all Starbury stuff. Like you go to a Nike store, it’s going to be Starbury,” said Marbury, who has his logo tattooed to his head. “In Year Five, my goal is to have 150 stores.”
Marbury is still trying to end his basketball career with dignity, though he has no interest in an NBA return.
“How it ended with me playing in the NBA is the way it was supposed to end,” said Marbury, who last played with the Celtics in the 2009 playoffs. “It’s time to write another chapter. I’m in a different place. This is a way deeper project. It’s bigger than basketball.”
He is putting 10 percent of his contract toward helping basketball schools for boys and girls. It’s a charitable move and sound business, investing in the grass roots. The bigger basketball becomes in China, the more apparel Marbury can sell.
Team USA’s Chauncey Billups, one of Marbury’s best friends in the NBA, said over the weekend after practicing at the Knicks facility, “Steph has always kind of been ahead of the curve as far as business and always being innovative with little things that he tries to do. So I’m sure that whatever he’s doing over there in China, it’s gonna work out big for him.”
Marbury is training again in Los Angeles, running the Hollywood Hills, getting ready for the Chinese season that begins in December.
Billups said he would rather see Marbury in the NBA.
“Steph is Steph, man,” Billups said. “Y’all know Steph. He kind of toots to his tune, man, and that’s just kind of been him since high school. Really I’m just happy that he’s playing basketball again. I wish he was playing in the NBA. I feel like he’s still an NBA player.”