Former NBA Star Stephon Marbury Says He “Wanted To Die” In 2009

Former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury revealed recently that he contemplated suicide back in 2009, the last year he played in the league.
According to ESPN, the 37-year-old opens up during an interview with HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, revealing that the combination of his struggling basketball career, his failing "Starbury" sneaker company and the death of his father in 2007 led to a downward spiral.
"I wanted to die," Marbury said in the interview, which airs Tuesday night (Jan. 20). "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."
He last played for the Boston Celtics, but would garner criticism years before that, including his stint with the New York Knicks from 2004 to 2009, where he feuded with coaches Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas. Despite the controversy, he was putting up numbers... but when Marbury's on-court production with the Knicks dipped, so did the sale of his sneakers.
"When everything went on with the Knicks, and, you know, my father passed on, the [Starbury] brand was -- it was basically losing life slowly," he tells HBO. "And I was watching it. 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 played in the NBA for 13 years, including stints with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Phoenix Suns and New Jersey Nets. He joined the Chinese Basketball Association in 2010 and currently plays for the Beijing Ducks, a team he helped lead to a league title.