Stephon Marbury: Sometimes A Dude’s Just Gotta Get His Cry On

You just knew that Stephon Marbury’s “24 hours on a live cam” stunt was going to produce compelling, insane stuff, but it really hit its apex when the NBA star broke down in tears listening to some Kirk Franklin. He’s getting some shit for it, but it’s cool, brah. Sometimes a dude’s just gotta be strong enough to cry.

This isn’t the first time Starbury’s taken to the internet, having already conducted a pretty compelling no-holds-barred chat on his Ustream channel earlier in the week, but this stunt was a whole other magilla. For 24 hours, the former Knick (and tenuous Celtic) held forth on any number of subjects at the prodding of thousands of fans who followed along and offered questions throughout. He joked about the NBA, politics, and music, he shaved and swam in his pool, and at one point late in the evening he threw on Kirk Franklin’s “Lean On Me” and just cold started crying his eyes out.

“What a baby!” you may holler. “Look at the little sissy!” you may say to no one in particular. But you would be wrong, man. In fact, for the first time ever, we actually unequivocally like Stephon Marbury.

Starbury’s been a complicated figure ever since he entered the NBA a decade and a half ago, and his soap opera years in New York have certainly destroyed any hope he had of being a respectable player. But, like Dennis Rodman before him, you have to admire any athlete that pulls the curtain back a little and just starts kicking against the bullshit of the professional sports culture. In an age of perfectly-crafted sound bites and interviews crafted by public relations pros, Marbury’s never been shy about shooting his mouth off and telling it like it is. Sure, it reveals him as a jerk, and sure it does nothing for team morale or image or whatever, but at least it’s goddamned interesting.

Of course, sports isn’t about being interesting: it’s about winning, and that’s something Marbury’s never really done with any regularity. And, in spite of his considerable talents, he’s never really ascended to a proper NBA throne. Was that what was going through his head in this moment? Was it the death of his father (which he famously missed because his family chose not to notify him in the middle of a game?) Was it something else that we have absolutely no access to?

Whatever it was, the dude just put on a song he loved, that got him in that special place, and he just lost it. And, instantly, he had one of his bro’s hands on his shoulder. It’s an oddly beautiful moment, uniquely vulnerable in this age of total image control. Of course, he’s shirtless with a huge-ass chain, sporting a watch that costs more than your Dad’s car, so viewers can be forgiven for holding back on their sympathies. But get real. Fellas, who among us has not had this moment, usually fueled by enormous amounts of alcohol, where you throw on one of those songs that just gets you and there’s no women around to distract you, and you’ve got something on your mind, and you just go for it in front of your bros. This is like documentary nature footage of an actual “I love you, man” moment, and we’ve all been there, so cut the guy some slack.

Latinos in particular should be mindful of this, because we are an emotional people, and we’re all just five or six Miller Lites away from either crying or singing along to the radio. So let’s all raise a shot to Stephon Marbury, and perhaps call him a pussy while everyone’s looking to keep up appearances, but if somebody puts Los Laureles on the jukebox and it makes us think of our little abuela let us not pretend there’s just “something in our eyes.”