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Stephon Marbury’s turbulent decade in the N.B.A. was marked by public feuds and lackluster teams, but in recent years he has found a better basketball life in China, where he has led the Beijing Ducks to two national championships.

The mutual love affair between Marbury, 37, and his adopted home of Beijing will reach a new milestone this fall when “I Am Stephon Marbury,” a musical about his life in China, opens in the capital with Marbury on stage, playing himself.

The notion of Marbury as the centerpiece of an admiring theatrical production is likely to lead to some snickering in New York, where fans have few fond memories of his tenure as a Knick. Then again, Broadway is a long way from Beijing, so what New Yorkers think of all this doesn’t really matter.



The show’s website declares “I Am Stephon Marbury’’ to be “China’s first fusion of sports, music, dance and multimedia for a sports-themed youth theater event.” It plans to feature the Chinese Basketball Association’s top cheerleading squad and performers trained to do various basketball tricks. According to the website, other celebrities will make surprise appearances on stage, including Yao Ming, who once starred with the Houston Rockets.

The play, which will run for 11 consecutive nights, centers on the idea that Marbury is a successful Beijing vagabond, or beipiao — a Chinese term typically used to refer to the millions of migrant workers who flock to the capital in search of employment without official Beijing residence permits. The plot follows the story of a musician, a beipiao himself, who arrives in Beijing in search of fame and is inspired to beat the odds by watching Marbury lead the Ducks to their first-ever championship during the 2011-12 season.

Despite its title, the play isn’t a straight biographical account of Marbury’s life, but rather a parable about pursuing one’s dreams. Though Marbury will play himself in the production, the show’s official site warns that he will appear only in a limited number of scenes because of his inexperience with acting and inability to speak Mandarin.

However good or bad the production is judged to be, it is one more reminder of how remarkably Marbury’s life has changed in recent years.

A high school basketball star in Brooklyn and a college standout at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Marbury was the fourth pick in the first round of the 1996 N.B.A. draft. He played two-plus seasons in Minnesota, several more in New Jersey with the Nets, was traded to Phoenix for Jason Kidd in a deal that helped the Nets a lot more than the Suns, and finally came home to New York, where initial excitement gave way to considerable disappointment.

In all or parts of five seasons in New York, he led the Knicks to exactly one playoff appearance, a four-game sweep at the hands of Kidd and the Nets. Later he tussled with the Knicks coach, Larry Brown, and still later was essentially exiled by another Knicks coach, Mike D’Antoni, and instructed by the team not to attend any practices or games. He eventually took a buyout from the Knicks in February 2009, played briefly with the Boston Celtics, took some time off and then, in January 2010, began his Chinese adventure, playing for the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons of the Chinese Basketball Association.

Then came bigger success with the Beijing Ducks. A life-size bronze statue of Marbury victoriously holding the championship trophy now stands on the lawn in front of MasterCard Center, where the Ducks’ games are held and where “I Am Stephon Marbury” will be shown, with ticket prices ranging from $30 to $270.

The city dubbed him an honorary citizen of Beijing in April and, more recently, has chosen him to be an official role model in a citywide campaign encouraging people to “work hard and live morally.”

Marbury’s left arm now includes block letters running from elbow to wrist with the three characters of his Chinese name — Ma Bu Li (马布里). There is also a smaller declaration in English that he loves China. And now comes the musical.

And for fans who want yet more, Marbury already has plans to celebrate his C.B.A. career in greater detail in a television series, “A New Yorker in Beijing.” The Nanjing Daily reported that the show was still in an early development phase, but it’s being sold as a reversal of a best-selling novel of the early 1990s, “Beijinger in New York” by Glen Cao, about a Beijing family’s difficulties as immigrants in the United States. The novel was later turned into a popular TV series.