Stephon Marbury, Entrepreneur, Plans on Staying in China for a While

"The Knicks are looking good," Marbury says, watching the game from a suite in the Swiss Hotel, which is his home for the year. "They got some players now, unlike before."

It's been a lonely, isolated life for Marbury since he took his talents to China a year ago. He started with a team in Shanxi, a dusty coal-mining town in the country's interior. After a contract dispute, he signed with Foshan (a coastal city about 550 miles north of Shanghai) last December, just days before the 35-game CBA season kicked off. Known for being surrounded by family and friends, Marbury has none of the former and just a couple of the latter in China. When not practicing or playing basketball, he rarely leaves his hotel for two reasons: One, the average citizen of Foshan does not speak English (when he does go out, he's usually accompanied by Cyril White, his manager, who speaks Mandarin); and two, he can't stand the food.

"The food is, by far, the toughest adjustment for me living in China," he says. "Everything else is all right. I mean, I come from New York; if you can make it there you can make it anywhere." Clichés aside, the Coney Island native has indeed "made it" in China in ways many former NBA players have not. Just last month, Ricky Davis, Steve Francis, Javaris Crittenton, and Mike James were all cut by their respective Chinese clubs for various reasons. "Those guys weren't cut because they couldn't play," White says, pointing out that Crittenton averaged 25 points a game with his club, Zhejiang Guangsha. "It's because those guys wouldn't, or couldn't, adjust to China. Steph is not making China adjust to him, he's adjusting to China."

"Why go someplace if it's not going to put you in a situation where you can continue to grow?" he says. "There's definitely going to be a lockout in the NBA after this season. The owners do not want to pay older players, and the players will cave, because they're only focused on now. The owners, they're looking at this long term, like a fifteen-year business investment."