Stephon Marbury is the only professional basketball player I first learned about from a book. “The Last Shot,” a deeply empathetic work of narrative nonfiction by Darcy Frey, which was published in 1994, portrays Marbury during his freshman year at Coney Island’s Lincoln High School, as he and his older teammates on the basketball team—Marbury was the point guard—navigated urban poverty, lacklustre schooling, and the joys, teasing cruelties, and insidious corruption of high-level “amateur” sports. Early in the book, at the end of a nighttime game in Coney Island, Marbury takes a few dribbles, throws up an arcing alley-oop, and a teammate—who happens to be Marbury’s elder cousin—dunks the pass home for a win. “Then he raises his arms jubilantly and dances a little jig,” Frey writes, of Marbury, “rendered momentarily insane by the sheer, giddy pleasure of playing this game to perfection.”
That early perfection made Marbury renowned within New York’s five boroughs and, eventually, far beyond. He was drafted into the N.B.A. in 1996, by Milwaukee, which immediately traded him to Minnesota, where he briefly formed a talented duo with the rising superstar Kevin Garnett. But his departure from the team—during his third season, he asked for a trade—was a bigger story than his impressive stat lines had been, and, although Marbury became an All-Star, bad press followed him to his next team, the New Jersey Nets, then to the Phoenix Suns, and, most memorably, to his home-town New York Knicks, where he was coached by Larry Brown, with whom he had a comically bad relationship, one already soured by their losing effort together at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Brown was fired, and the Knicks’ general manager, Isiah Thomas, took over coaching duties; he clashed with Marbury, too. By the end of Marbury’s time in New York, he had been asked not to practice or play with the team.
He spent part of a year coming off the bench for the Boston Celtics, then made the surprising choice to play in the Chinese Basketball Association, where he built a new, highly successful life as an expatriate ex-N.B.A.-er. No overseas second act has done so much to change a player’s perception among basketball fans. Marbury eventually won three championship titles with the Beijing Ducks, and has become a kind of national culture hero in China. A statue of him stands in Beijing, outside the arena where he played; he was given the keys to the city; and, after his last game as a professional, the crowd stood and applauded. Some wept. Now, somewhat improbably, given his earlier troubles with management, he is a coach for the Beijing Royal Fighters.
Marbury has been analyzed and discussed as much as he has been watched—Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” released in 1998, was widely assumed to be based in part on Marbury’s life—and he has displayed a concomitant passion for self-presentation. As a rookie, rather than sign an endorsement deal with Nike or Adidas, he opted for the small streetwear brand And1. Later, he entered a partnership with the clothing retailer Steve & Barry’s, where he designed and marketed the Starbury sneaker, which sold for just fifteen dollars. In 2009, Marbury recorded an angry, imprecatory live stream for twenty-four hours, railing against the Knicks, listening to gospel music, and occasionally weeping. (At one point, Marbury, complaining of a sore throat, ate several gobs of Vaseline.) In 2014, he starred in a musical called “I Am Stephon Marbury,” and, in 2017, he played himself in “My Other Home,” an autobiographical movie about his adventures in China.
Now comes a new documentary about his life, called “A Kid from Coney Island,” which gallops from Brooklyn to China and takes scrupulous, almost legal, care to point out the myriad ways in which Marbury has been, from his perspective, misunderstood and maligned. It is largely narrated by Marbury’s friends and family, though the ESPN anchor Stephen A. Smith also appears. The movie premièred at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and showed in theatres before the coronavirus effectively shut down the American box office. It’s now available to stream. Recently, I spoke to Marbury on the phone. He had just returned to his home in Beijing after a short promotional trip to New York. Shortly before we spoke, the New York Post had reported that Marbury was working with Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president, to coördinate a large shipment of medical masks to his home town. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.
I read that you’re trying to get some masks sent from China to New York—thank you for that. I also read that your cousin passed away. I’m very sorry for your loss. How is your family doing?
It’s been devastating for us. It’s breaking a lot of families down, and it’s traumatizing.
And your aunt’s been hospitalized, right? How is she?
She’s the same right now. She hasn’t changed. The scary part is, they’re talking about taking people off of ventilators who have been on them for a certain amount of time and aren’t getting better. So we’re just praying that she can get some strength so that she can continue to stay on.
What’s the status with getting the masks shipped?
We’re getting closer. You’ve gotta follow the protocols, so I put them in contact with the people they need to be in contact with, and now they’re finishing up. Soon, it should be, from what I’m hearing.
How was it being in China for some of this, where it hit first?
I actually was here right when it started, and then I went to America when it started there. Right when it started to get bad in America, I came back to China. And China is O.K. now.
I first heard about you from a book, years ago: “The Last Shot,” by Darcy Frey, which came out when you were still in high school. Then, a few years later, I saw Spike Lee’s movie about a basketball prospect from Coney Island, “He Got Game,” which is partly based on you, a few years later. [Lee has said, of suggestions that the Marbury family inspired the movie, “It’s not about them.” But the parallels are hard to ignore.] And there were documentaries about you when you were a kid, too. What is it like to have your life told so many different ways—and why did you decide that you wanted to tell it this way, now, with this documentary?
You know, you got people like Spike Lee, who tried to take my story and tell it without us having any part in telling our story—tried to do that and failed, but was able to write a good script for people to watch a movie. And then guys like Darcy Frey, who made up stuff which people thought was true—a lot of it was false, because he just started to write about what he wanted to write. [Frey said that he didn’t make up anything in “The Last Shot,” adding, “It’s a work of journalism, and I applied the same standards to the reporting and writing of the book as I’d have applied writing for a daily newspaper.”]
So it was good to be able to give people this visual—this was the real story.
It occurred to me for the first time while watching it that you were like a child star: when you were sixteen and seventeen, at Lincoln High School, in Coney Island, people all over the city knew your name. Was that hard to deal with?
It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t hard because I had my mom, my dad, my brothers and sisters. I never really had any space to get a big head. I think, because of the way I was as a basketball player, that sometimes people got the person mixed up with the personality.
I was a little bit ahead of everyone’s time because I had older brothers that played the game, and went to college, and had different experiences—whereas some guys, they don’t have older brothers to teach them, to tell them the things that they need to know, as far as how to navigate, guys like LeBron James and Kevin Garnett. You know, who were their mentors? Kobe Bryant, you could see that he had a different type of acceleration, because his dad played professional basketball—he played in Italy. Whereas these other guys were being groomed by guys like Worldwide Wes, you know what I’m saying?
How many kids you know were flying to college in private jets to pick them up to do a school visit? These things that happened to me were completely different from what these guys had experienced. So I paved the way for a lot of things that happened. And I think they’ve tried to minimize a lot of things that happened with me as far as what I did in basketball and how I was capable of playing the game.
Even back when you were on the Knicks, you were doing live streams. Now there’s Twitter and Instagram—all these different ways for guys to get their own stories out. But you were ahead of the times in that way, too. What was the idea behind that back then?
Nobody was doing it. I was the crazy one because I was the guy that ate Vaseline. I ate Vaseline, so you think I’m crazy and something’s wrong with me. Your mother’s doing crack and your father’s doing coke; I’m not crazy. Your favorite rappers, they stick needles in their arm, heroin in their arm, and you look at them as heroes, and then you call me crazy because I ate Vaseline? It’s just amazing to me the limitations that people can try to put on you because you just don’t perform for the B.S. and the nonsense. I’ve always been vigilant, standing on my own feet and not worrying or caring about what someone thought about me or how they felt about me based upon something that happened between myself and someone else.
But when you have so many people writing about you, and what they’re saying is negative, people tend to fall right in line with it. They’ll depict this little black kid from Coney Island as this rebellious tyrant. And it was never that.
You came into the league in 1996. There were so many things happening then in the league. Like the dress code. [In 2005, the N.B.A. began requiring players to wear business dress before and after games; it was widely seen as an attempt to discourage the hip-hop-inflected outfits worn by players such as Allen Iverson.] Do you think that was part of the race problem between fans and players that sometimes shows up in the N.B.A.?
Race is always going to be an issue in America. I’ve never been one to get caught up in that. Because love is the ruler and God is always on the phone. And if you show love and you get hate back, they see love, and then they realize that what they’re dishing out is hate. So I never really wrapped myself into anything like that.
You were a strong, fast, scoring point guard, but you still got a lot of assists. It seems like your style of play would fit the league even more now than it did back then. Do you think that, if you had come into the league at a different time, your game would’ve been thought of differently?
I mean, my game—my game is timeless. The way I played, it’s my style, and, my style, it fits in any era. Power, strength, finesse, jump shot, jump, dunk. You didn’t have guys doing the things that I was doing on the basketball court at my size. How many guards do you know scored going through the middle of the paint?
You know what? I was always the guy that it was, “Oh, he got traded.” When I get traded, it’s such a big deal. When other guys get traded, it’s not. Yeah, I had issues with guys in the locker room. Because they wasn’t real. Period. They know who they are. They didn’t give me a hundred all the way through. Some people just needed to grow up. And I needed to grow up in some areas. It’s all part of a learning curve. I’m grateful for all of the ups and downs—Larry Brown, the things that have gone on. All those things helped me get to where I am right now. If you said you could do it all over again, I’d be, like, No. What do I care if you call me out on the two statues, and the museum, a green card. A key to the city of the most populous country in the world. Like, I’m good. God had a plan for me. And I’m very comfortable with where I am right now.
You mentioned Larry Brown. I was just thinking about your time with the Knicks. Now everybody talks about how dysfunctional the Knicks are. Was it something that you noticed when you first got there? Was there trouble and chaos in that building beyond whatever was going on with your clashes with Larry Brown?
Larry Brown, he showed that he was a great businessman in how he handled what he handled in New York. It wasn’t like he was there for ten, fifteen years. Larry Brown was there for one year, and he left. Thirty million dollars, one year. Like, you gotta look at it: he was a great businessman. You make thirty million dollars for one year, and you’re a coach—that’s not bad.
That’s a good deal.
I’m telling you. You sign a deal for fifty million dollars, you get bought out of the deal from Detroit for eighteen million dollars—that’s sixty-eight million right there. You go to New York, you get ten million for one year, and do whatever you did that year, and then they buy you out the following year for twenty million dollars. He’s a great businessman.
But I learned a lot from Larry Brown. I learned what not to be from him. You know what I’m saying? I’m a straight shooter. And I don’t have no problem with Larry Brown. But what happened, and what went on, that’s all gonna remain the same. It’s just like slavery: it happened. I’m fine that I moved on from this. But you’re not gonna act like that didn’t happen.
Was it just as simple as he didn’t like you? Or did it have something to do with the actual game of basketball?
I don’t think that he liked me. Because I wasn’t one of the guys that he could talk to any kind of way. I stood up for myself, and he had to respect me—he didn’t like that. First of all, my father’s from Chattanooga, Tennessee; my mom is from New York—I didn’t come from a broken home. I’m a black kid from the ghetto, but I’m not that black kid from the ghetto that didn’t have any understanding. All my brothers went to Division 1 colleges. All my sisters went to college. It’s, like, the respect level wasn’t where it should’ve been. You can yell at me as much as you want if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. But if I’m doing my best, and I’m trying my hardest, and you trying to break me down, now, that’s a little different. Because my pop is one of the biggest yellers and screamers of all time—but not if you doing what you supposed to be doing to win the game.
Even when we went to the Olympics, he told me to go one direction, I went that direction, and then he said, “Oh, you went the wrong way.” I was, like, “Hold up.” Like, literally, I ran up in his face and was, like, “What? You just now told me to do this. And then I did that.” And then he stopped practice. Never forget it. Stopped practice. They tried to send me home. Like, literally.
They told you to go home?
Yes, they brought—what’s his name? The coach, Popovich. [Gregg] Popovich brought me downstairs, in the dungeon of the hotel, and was asking for me to go home, and that they would tell the media that I hurt my knee. I was, like, “What?”
Wow.
I was, like, “Look, man. Why don’t you tell Larry Brown to come down here and tell me in my face, and you stop doing his dirty work.” He was, like, “You know what? I’m gonna do exactly that.” He called Larry Brown, and then Larry Brown: “Oh, what is this I hear you talking about?” And I said, “Exactly. Why you had your assistant coach come and talk to me? You could’ve came and talked to me like a man.” And then, after that, I told him, “Look, you’re not gonna have not one problem with me. Don’t worry; I’m not gonna say nothing. I’m gonna do my job.” [A representative for Popovich declined a request for comment. Larry Brown could not be reached.]
It all started from the first day. We were all sitting down all around the table. And everybody was asking everybody about what we gonna contribute, basically. It got around to me, and everybody already said everything that we needed to do. So I said, “Let’s just make sure we do one thing: let’s not forget to have fun.”
Larry Brown goes, “Ha. This guy. He’s talking about having fun.” I’m looking around, like, “Did I say something wrong?” From then on, it was just, like, it was on. And then they hired him for the Knicks. I was, like, “This shit—I can’t believe this.” Like, they just didn’t want to deal with me. So I got on the bus every day. We stayed on the Queen Mary, so you could ask any one of those players. Tim Duncan. You could ask Lebron James, Dwyane Wade. Every day I be on the bus, an hour and a half before everybody. Just so I wouldn’t have to walk by and say nothing to Larry Brown. The worst thirty-eight days of my life.
Two things that must’ve been dreams, the Olympics and playing for your home team, things that should’ve been great—
It was a disaster. Period. I mean, we didn’t win. So.
A little while after Brown was fired, a Knicks executive sued Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden for sexual harassment, and you were called to testify about a sexual encounter with a team employee. There were a lot of tabloid headlines. Are there decisions you’d make differently now? And do you feel like the press treated you unfairly in that whole episode?
I did something that men did, and I paid for it. It’s something that happened. The lawsuit wasn’t about me. I got dragged into it, to make the case. The lawsuit was filed against Isiah Thomas. [A judge found Thomas and Madison Square Garden, the corporation that owns the Knicks, liable; a jury awarded the plaintiff eleven and a half million dollars.]
You talked about your dad, how he could be a yeller, but that he was always kind of encouraging you. The documentary recounts the story of when your dad died, and how you weren’t able to be there. [Donald Marbury died in 2007, during a game between the Knicks and the Suns. Marbury’s family let Knicks officials know but waited until after the game to tell Marbury.] That must’ve been devastating, given how close you two were.
It’s just—it is your dad. Sad all the way around. Like, can’t explain it.
Your sister, Stephanie, says that if your father hadn’t died you wouldn’t have gone to China. Do you think that’s true?
Probably.
Why?
My father’s death, it was devastating to my family. During that time, when my pops died—I didn’t have my breakdown when I was on live TV. I had my breakdown when I was home, in silence. As far as being depressed, and you’re in a space where you don’t want to eat, crying, trying to figure out how and why . . . For me, when that happened, basketball was the furthest thing from my mind. Going to China was just another way to do things. I’d never been to China! I knew nothing about China! People were thinking, He’s just going there to make money. I didn't even know what I could possibly do in China in building out my brand. People never knew that. They just took their own ideas and put them out there on paper, and spoke to people about it on TV and on radio about why it is I did what I did, when it wasn’t about that. I came completely naked and vulnerable to learn and love something completely different. So it was an opportunity, and I took it.
That was such a big move in the world of basketball—I remember it like it was yesterday. Were you imagining it all playing out like this?
If I was to go to somebody and say, “Yeah, I had a dream that I was gonna win three championships. They was gonna build two statues of me. They were gonna build a museum of me on the main road, five kilometres away from Tiananmen Square. I was going to be the thirtieth person to receive the key to the city of Beijing. I was gonna get the Great Wall Friendship Award. I was gonna have a green card”—if I was to go to somebody and tell them that I had that dream, you know what people would say to me? “I thought you were definitely outta your mind, yo. Definitely outta your mind.”
So, when you see all of what has happened, you know there’s a higher power. I trust in God. That’s what I trust. I trust in God. Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior. My whole family’s got a Christian background. That’s another thing people talk about, “Aw, you pray to a fake God.” And that’s O.K. I don’t judge your belief, or what you feel. But why does it always gotta be questioned—what I believe and what I feel? Because I believe that that was all lies. And everything that happened up until this second, right now, I believe that is all God, planning and prepping and preparing me. It’s something that I have no clue about. Because we are all going to leave this thing. We’re all gonna die. We’re all gonna go from one space into the next space. And when you know that this is going to happen, you gotta make sure your soul is right.
I know that all of that stuff happened because of God. When I was playing in the last Finals game, to win the championship, in the fourth quarter I shot a hundred per cent and didn’t even know. I didn’t miss.
This is your first championship there?
This was the third championship, to build the dynasty in Beijing. They only wanted to win one championship. They never dreamed about winning three championships. I told them, “We gonna win five.” That’s what I was going for. They was, like, “You’re bugging. Like, no.”
So for me to come here and do the things that have been done, I know it’s nothing but the grace of God. Because I ain’t had nothing to do with it. When I tell people this, they be, like, “What do you mean, you had nothing to do with it?” I be, like, “I was the vehicle to do it, but it was a connection, in which I was able to receive the connection to be able to tap into this state on Earth.” And then, when you watch me playing, you say, “Yo, he’s in the zone.” That’s what we call it: the zone. And not everybody can access that state, because not everybody’s tapped in inside of their mind and inside of their heart. They’re not always able to tap into that state to be able to gravitate into this whole—where you see it on the court, to make your teammates have this type of energy that you can see. Where people can see that type of energy, they can see it, they’re usually, like, “Yo.” You get hype, like, looking at it. Whatever it is. And watching football, basketball, baseball. You’d be, like, “He’s locked in.” And this is what the Chinese people got a chance to see. You know what I’m saying?
They’ll be, like, “Ah, they love you so much in China. Why do they love so much?” I think because it’s all love. That’s why. You think it’s gonna be basketball? Nah. Listen, it ain’t got nothing to do with basketball.
How did you build a team with people from all around the world, given the differences in culture and language?
Basketball is a universal language. And because it’s a universal language, and because it’s all energy and wills and power and clutch and determination and sacrifice—all of these different components that are combined into one—I didn’t have to know the language. If somebody yells that you’re on defense, you don’t understand the exact thing, but you know that you’re about to get picked, because your teammate is screaming. Or if somebody’s open, they swing, and you’re, like, “Oh, they’re passing a little bit.” It’s ingrained to recognize it, and to understand. Although, I had a translator, so, you know, you always constantly communicate through someone.
Were you homesick? You talked about being homesick in Minnesota.
No. I evolved. I grew. I was eighteen years old when I went to Minnesota. I was a high-school kid. I went from high school, from New York, the melting pot. I grew up around black, white, Chinese, Puerto Rican. Then I go to Atlanta. So now I’m around a lot of black people. I move from there to Minnesota, where it’s however many per cent white people. It was a shock.
And I’m in tune with who I am, and what I want to be, and evolving and growing. And I did something that dudes don’t do when they get traded. I was in my contract year. I went to the owner of the team, and I sat down with him, and I said, “Mr. Taylor, I love Minnesota. I love playing basketball here. But I don’t wanna spend seven more years of my life living here.” I said, “The fans are great. They’re amazing.” He said, “Stephon, I just want to tell you I really appreciate you coming to tell me this.” Because I said, “You know, I want you guys to get another point guard. You guys drafted me. You gave me my first opportunity to come here and play basketball. It’s, just, I’m ready to move on, try to go back home.” And he completely, a hundred per cent respected that.
The next day, when I get traded, Kevin McHale, he’s calling me selfish—all these different things. I said, “Wow, this is amazing.” First I get traded and I leave, and he’s mad, upset. Whatever, I get it. I understand. But to say that I’m selfish, you’re putting this label on me now. You’re one of the greatest players to ever play basketball, and I’m this young player. So now you’ve made me out to look bad, after you just offered me a max deal. I’m, like, “This doesn’t make sense.” And I laughed. And they got mad because I laughed. After I won my first championship, in China, Kevin McHale was the first person to try to get me to come back to the N.B.A., to come back to the Houston Rockets.
Really?
My friends were, like, “You can make so much more money if you come back to the N.B.A.” I said, “You know what? I’d rather have my peace of mind than have all of that money that I was making.” Because I wasn’t happy. And then they was getting ready to build the statue. I was, like, How do you leave that? [McHale did not respond to a request for comment.]
Nobody’s had a career like this—some people have obviously gone overseas, but you don’t tend to hear about them that much back in the U.S. after they do.
It’s exactly what you said: nobody’s had a career like this. And there’s no one that can follow that.
Speaking of stuff that you’ve done that other people haven’t done, I was thinking about your apparel decisions. I had those first And1s.
Dope.
Normally, somebody of your calibre would sign an endorsement deal with Nike or Adidas or what have you. You were thinking differently. Why was that?
When I met with Steve & Barry’s, I signed a deal with them in thirty minutes. I told them I didn’t want no money. I wanted them to pay for all my trademarks. That’s it. And the reason why they wanted me was because, I told them, “We’re doing a regular licensing agreement. Because if you can make products at this price, and sell it to people, I can definitely go into their gold mine. Because everybody will have access, and people will be able to buy something that they can afford, and it’s great quality.” And now you see all of the brands—they’ve got stuff at five dollars, eight dollars. I made that popular and cool, period.
And I was delighted and happy to do it, because I come from the ghetto. I come from the projects. I come from my mom struggling to afford buying sneakers that you could get killed over. Maybe on a special occasion you’d get a pair of Jordans, but it wasn’t an all-the-time thing. Like, one kid, he got, like, every edition. No. That wasn’t going down. So, for me, being able to give kids access, for the people to be able to have it at an affordable price, knowing how my mom struggled having seven kids, knowing how, like I said, a pair of sneakers—that’s groceries for the week!
And being able to do that, and wear the shoes, and wear the clothes, and kids see that, and they recognize that it’s real, you know? They tried to make kids feel bad about it. Not everybody got to like the shoes. It’s cool. You don’t got to try to make them feel bad because they got something that’s affordable. Where you have big brands speaking to the people about my brand. Like, when LeBron James said, “Me being with Nike, we hold our standards high.”
I know LeBron James. I was around him for thirty-eight days. So I know that, yes, he’s grown as a human being, but, when he said that, I’m, like, You sound like you’re in the commercial. I felt like I was being attacked for creating something that was allowing people from the area that I came from—they don’t have to go and buy expensive shoes anymore. Now they can go and buy ten pairs of shoes, fifteen pairs of shoes. Different styles, all different flavors. Right? And now they have this opportunity to be able to live this luxurious life, but inside of the hood. With somebody [like me] that they knew could hoop, that was hip, that was loud, that was active in the community, that shows love, that got fly. Somebody that was doing the same thing as them.
I wasn’t endorsing something I wasn’t wearing. I literally went to the store, picked up the shoes off the shelves, paid for the shoes, walked to the Garden, put the shoes on and got busy. They couldn’t deal with it. It was too much. Nobody on Earth ever did that before. And when you do things that nobody ever did on Earth, it can get a little scary.
There are a lot of people from the world of hip-hop in the documentary—Cam’ron, Fat Joe. When you were growing up in New York, how were hip-hop and basketball intertwined?
We grew up in the era where everything was hot. Biggie, Pac, Nas, Jay-Z, Lil’ Kim. All these m.c.s that everybody loves. Guys like Cam’ron, and guys in our era: Mase, the Lox. Those guys were like the draft class of ’96, like the new wave of the future. It went from Rakim to KRS-One—if you follow hip-hop—to Slick Rick, Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh. You know what I’m saying? Heavy D, the Fat Boys. All of the people that we looked up to. MC Lyte, Queen Latifah. That whole era was like a surge. We were the ones that got to experience this surge, this new wave and this new current of energy that was flowing on earth from a sound, from people making music, going into your brain and powering you—getting you hype before the game. And when you see guys like Cam’ron, who could play basketball and rap at the same time, it was bringing something new to the game; it was a new dimension.
You mentioned the class of ’96, and I was thinking about how great of a draft class that was. But I was also, of course, especially, thinking about Kobe. I have always thought about you two together—and Iverson, too. How’d you react to losing him, along with the rest of the basketball world?
I was hurt. I was messed up, just from the perspective of life. Because we grew up playing with these guys. You know his will, you know his plays and how he approached the game of basketball. You can literally see his spirit on the court anytime you play against him, because of his love and passion for the game. He got a chance to embody that, and it became a mentality, the Mamba mentality. I hate how we lost him.
Did you two have a personal relationship?
You know, I felt that his basketball spirit and my basketball spirit knew each other better than we knew each other as people. And friends.
When you watch these days, who are the players that you’re most excited about? Do you watch the N.B.A. now?
Yeah, I watch the N.B.A.
What do you think about how the game is played these days?
The game is dope. The new guys are amazing. They do things that you’ve never seen before. The game has changed a lot—it’s not as physical as it was when I played in ’96, that era, and probably before that. But I think that’s probably the only thing that’s not the way it used to be.
Do you have favorite players to watch these days?
I actually like watching the Pelicans. I love Zion [Williamson]; I think he’s great. I like watching Lonzo Ball, the way he grew. I think he really took it upon himself this year to really focus on his shot and how he’s running the game. It’s great to see him playing the way I was playing, you know, after getting traded from L.A. He went to a place where he’s able to play his style, and him playing with Zion, it looks like those guys are gonna play together for the rest of their careers.
What was it that made you want to coach?
Whew. Coaching. I always said I wanted to give back to the game, and China has given me so much. And I’m grateful for all that China has done for me. So it’s just paying it forward and giving back. It’s pretty challenging, coaching, but I love doing it. It’s a real time, you know. When you’re a perfectionist and trying to be perfect, and you know that practice doesn’t make perfect, it only makes permanent, you have to work at a pace and the speed to be consistent. Being consistent is vital. You can fail, you can lose, but you gotta lose a certain way, which I teach my players. Like, I’m O.K. with losing, but you gotta lose the right way. Because if you lose the right way, it means giving yourself a chance to win. So, as a coach, this is what I teach, and this is what I preach.
It seems like three years ago now, but, at the beginning of this season, Daryl Morey tweeted something in support of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and there was this big back-and-forth here in the states about the N.B.A. and China and how that relationship would be and should be going forward. I wondered if there was something about that conversation that we were missing over here that you saw, from where you stood.
Next question.
O.K. Nothing on that?
[Laughs.] My sister went to journalism school at U. of H., University of Houston. She said, “All you gotta say is ‘Next question,’ and journalists have to respect that.”
Are you basically half-time back and forth between China and the States?
I go back and forth, yeah. This is where I work, and this is what I’m building. My family, they come back and forth. They haven’t been in a while, but they come. When you build something, it takes time. And what I’ve been doing over the course of these years of playing basketball, it’s allowed me to have opportunities to be able to do some of the things that I’ve been able to do, such as helping Eric Adams try to source product. That’s what China is about—it’s about relationships. It’s pretty cool, and I’ve established that.
The documentary is told through other people for much of it, with your family and some archival footage. Stephen A. Smith is in there. You don’t come in until the end, basically, when things move to China. What was that choice about, not having your voice all throughout the movie?
Everyone had their perception about what went on, so we let people tell the story, and then I come in to tell the second half, which is China. And the best part of the documentary is the part with little Xavier. [Toward the end of the film, Marbury has a long conversation with a kid named Xavier—Marbury’s middle name—whom he meets in a Coney Island barbershop.] That’s the turning point in the whole movie. This movie is not just about me; it’s about a kid from Coney Island. It’s about all of the other kids that were there. And it’s also about a kid from Compton, a kid from all different parts of the world that shares these stories.
I thought it was an interesting choice, ending with the young kid who’s got your name. I also wondered about the choice to have somebody like Stephen A. in it, because, as we talked about, you’ve had your issues with the press.
If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have put him in my documentary. That’s me, personally. It’s cool, though, because you gotta have that balance.
I knew Stephen A. Smith from when he was younger, so I got my own little thing with him, as far as what I know about him, and what I think and what I feel.
What do you mean?
Stephen A. Smith used to get information from different coaches. He’d get stuff from different coaches and just rant about stuff, and then be, like, “Oh, my source.” Who’s your source? I never played that type of game. I kept it real. If you wanna say something about me, say something about me. Don’t try to play me and then smile in my face.
Your story has so much to do with how you have been perceived by the media, so it was interesting to have that in there, to show how you were in this constant battle.
I mean, it is what it is, my brother.
