It’s been some kinda offseason for the Knicks’ shy, retiring Stephon Marbury. Between his spectacular appearance on MSG’s “Mike’d Up” to his recent blogging activity for the New York Post, Marbury has done a wonderful job deflecting attention from the Garden’s sexual harrassment suit letting us inside his personal life. Newsday’s Ken Berger caught up with Marbury during another stop on his cheap sneaker promo campaign :
“People are saying that I’m crazy and that I’m on drugs, and I like that they’re saying that,” Marbury said Friday while riding to the next stop on his tour, Marion, Ind. “It’s called happy juice.
“I love basketball,” he said. “Basketball is my life and my passion. It’s not what defines me anymore. I allowed that to define me, and now I woke up and now I can smell the coffee.”
Marbury said the public criticism he’s received throughout his 11-year career was “a constant grind in my mind. I was fighting within myself. But I’m no longer fighting because I don’t have to fight.
“I don’t want to be carried on no throne,” Marbury said, a reference to LeBron James’ appearance last week on the ESPY Awards. “I want to walk with the people because I’ve never abandoned the people because I’m a servant to the people.”
Although Marbury said he’s no longer fighting, that doesn’t mean his guard has been completely lifted.
“If you’re going to write this, I’m going to make sure that they know that you got this from me, because I’m taping it just like you’re taping it,” Marbury said. “. . . I’m a journalist as well. Everybody is going to be held accountable for their words.”
On those who speculated that he called his wife his “better ho” on a recent local TV appearance: “They need to check themselves, because if they think that I was going to be able to go home after calling my wife a ho, that’s crazy. I said my better half, and my words got caught up so it sounded like I said ‘better ho.’ “