Starbury enjoying his time in China (props GQ)

Exiled from the NBA, vilified by the press, and ridiculed for a serious of questionable YouTube videos (eating Vaseline? c'mon!), Stephon Marbury is seeking redemption—and vast riches—in basketball-mad China. Now, if he can just win over his Communist bosses, he'll be the biggest thing since Yao Ming

 

 

    On his first morning in China, former NBA point guard Stephon Marbury went to the lobby of his hotel to attend what his translator had described as a "banquet" thrown by the management of the Shanxi Brave Dragons, who'd brought in the player for a second consecutive season in the hopes of shedding their reputation as one of the worst outfits in China's not very distinguished league. Enticing Marbury, the biggest celebrity ever to play in the Chinese Basketball Association, should have been cause for jubilation. Yet it was hard to detect much joy at the "banquet," which was taking place in a room the size of a parking space off the hotel's dining hall. The guest list consisted of two grimly perspiring middle-rung executives and a translator. No food was served, just tea. One got the sense that the finer points of graceful living didn't count much in the Brave Dragons' hometown of Taiyuan, an industrial city variously described in the online travel literature as "gritty," "smoggy," and "a fucking shithole." Outside, in the late autumn chill, the coal plants were going full tilt. Even with the windows closed, the air smelled like an emergency and had a salty chemical flavor you could taste with your eyes.
Still, Marbury seemed not to mind. "You get used to it," he told me before the meeting. "Really, it's not too bad, except this—" He gestured out the window at the unhandsome landscape of grease-blackened garages and industrial warehouses engulfed in the brown gloom. "And this—" He pointed at his mouth, indicating his distaste for the local cuisine. "When I first came here, for the first two weeks, I wanted to kill myself. But now I don't think about it."
Unlikely as it may sound to hear a multimillionaire athlete so emphatically resigned to a place like Taiyuan, it's worth recalling that by early 2010, when Marbury first cast his lot with the Dragons, he had reached a place in life where options did not abound. After leaving the NBA at age 32, the two-time All-Star's career had been defined not by his triumphs on the court but by what happened off it—a catalog of errors that included public spats with coaches, romancing a Knicks intern in his truck, and a series of candid Webcasts in which he wept, burst into song, ate Vaseline, and generally volunteered grist for broad speculation that he had gone out of his mind.
But then, when things looked dire indeed, associates put Marbury in touch with Chinese steel magnate Wang Xingjiang, who owned the Shanxi Brave Dragons. Until last year, Chinese law limited teams from paying their American players more than $60,000 per month (a sum Marbury characterized to me as "a little change"). As further enticement, Wang promised to crack China's growing market of 300 million basketball fans for Marbury's Starbury brand of low-cost apparel and shoes, a business that had been on ice since 2008. Promising an initial investment of $2.2 million, Wang and his associates would facilitate the selection of factories, coordinate construction of a nationwide franchise, and assist with the beleaguered point guard's rebirth in the fastest-growing economy in the world.
So Marbury left behind his family in genteel Purchase, New York, tried it out for a season, and found, to his great relief, a population of adoring fans willing to overlook his past. He drew record crowds to Brave Dragons games. At signings in Taiyuan within a month of his arrival, he moved 1,000 pairs of Starbury shoes in a few hours. He'd recently discussed with Shanxi a three-year contract and had not ruled out the possibility of retiring here.
"It's been unbelievable," he told me. "The fans there, they showed me so much love. They gave me a second chance." Here, Marbury raised his sleeve to show me where he'd had the characters of his Chinese name—Ma Bu Li—and a heart beside the word CHINA tattooed on his arm. "Two years ago, no one would get near me," he continued. "Now I got [a major American bank] wanting to invest $50 million in my company. Man, China has changed everything for me. Everything."
With the season opener fifteen days away, Dragons management was eager to check in on the condition—physical and otherwise—of the team's six-foot-two point guard. But Marbury had more immediate concerns. The previous season, he'd stayed at the five-star World Trade Hotel, which sits on the toniest strip Taiyuan has to offer, convenient to Rolex and Burberry shops, with a half-dozen restaurants and a spa on the premises. This year, to his displeasure, he'd been stabled instead at the Grand Metropark Wanshi Hotel, whose sumptuousness was a notch or two below what you'd expect at the Omaha airport Sleep Inn.
Upon arriving, he'd complained to his handlers, to no avail. Marbury did not fancy the idea of spending four months in this hotel, whose rooms were carpeted in cigarette-pocked low-nap the color of earwax and whose mattresses would have registered respectably on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Nor did he want to stomach four months of meals at the Wanshi's restaurant, an undersea-themed eatery whose evening buffet included such dishes as Grab Stick, Intestine Duck, Best Thick Seam, Ear Rabbit, Black Fungus, Meat, and Duck Bloody Piece.
In the tiny meeting room, Marbury was ushered to his seat by the Brave Dragons deputy Mr. Song, an unsmiling man with close-mown hair gelled into tidy gleaming barbs. Through the interpreter, a nervous twentysomething who gave her name as Cindy, Mr. Song explained that he was in the process of finding a good factory to start minting Starbury shoes, but that many factories had powered down for the winter and production would likely have to wait until spring. "For now," he said, "we want to concentrate on basketball."
"The business stuff will work itself out," Marbury said serenely. "I'm not worried about any of that. Right now I want to talk about my living conditions. I don't want to be in this hotel. I want to be in the World Trade."
This set off a long, hushed caucus among the Chinese parties. At last Cindy very antsily explained that due to a legal dispute between the team's owner and the World Trade, the hotel issue was a matter of some delicacy.
Marbury offered another proposal: Perhaps the team could arrange long-term quarters. "A three-bedroom apartment," said Marbury. "With TVs and a chef, and a maid to come every day. I could do that as well. I'm gonna be here for three years. It'd probably be cheaper to rent a place anyway."
But Mr. Song pursed his mouth and nodded sourly, giving the impression that he was not in the habit of indulging fussy requests from players. Marbury's Chinese teammates, by way of comparison, didn't get to stay in a hotel at all. They lived by the team's rusting gym on the outskirts of town, in a dormitory of pink concrete with a big pile of coal in the yard.
Mr. Song agreed to take up the hotel upgrade—a $14-a-night proposition—with his boss, then he turned the conversation to basketball. The Brave Dragons, he said, were promising this year, having recently acquired a second American player, Jamal Sampson, late of the Denver Nuggets. The most important thing, Mr. Song said through Cindy, was that the fourteenth-ranked team finish in the top eight.
Marbury gave him a straight look and held up his index finger. "Number one," he said.