Stephon Marbury was forced from the NBA a few years ago, and it may have saved his life. Marbury is now flourishing in China, but many of us have no clue how close Marbury was to ending his own life.
Who can forget the 2009 video Marbury livestreamed of himself crying and eating vaseline.
Many viewers were confused, some laughed at his strange behavior, and some even posted satirical spoof videos to mock Marbury.
Only a small few showed concern for Marbury’s mental health. In an upcoming segment on HBO’s Real Sports, Marbury, now 37, reveals that his life was spiraling out of control as his NBA career was coming to an end.
His wife, Latasha, says Marbury stayed in bed all day eating Fruity Pebbles, isolating himself after blowing it with the Knicks, the death of his father in 2007, and the unraveling of his “Starbury” discount sneaker company.
“When everything went on with the Knicks, and, you know, my father passed on, the [Starbury] brand was– it was basically losing life slowly,” Marbury tells HBO Real Sports’ Carlos Quintanilla. “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 admits now that he was “definitely” clinically depressed and “suicidal” at that point in his life.
“I wanted to die,” he remembers. “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.”