Starting around 2007 things really spiraled downward for Stephon Marbury. In 2007 his father died. His NBA career was clearly winding down while his shoe company was going out of business.
You may remember that time in Marbury’s life as when he was doing crazy live-streamed videos, like when he ate Vaseline.
He remembers it as the time he was depressed, to the point of being suicide.
Marbury discusses it in an upcoming HBO Real Sports, as reported by Ben Golliver at Sports Illustrated.
“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.”
Fortunately, Marbury found a way back. It just took a trip to China
There he has been reborn and is a basketball icon — he has led Beijing to two titles, they have put up a statue to him and there has been a play written about him and the impact he has had on the city.
Hopefully his story can inspire other people facing depression to find help. The episode airs on HBO on Jan. 20 at 10 p.m. ET.