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About two weeks ago, Stephon Marbury became a champion for the first time since high school. The Beijing-by-way-of-Brooklyn point guard led his Beijing Ducks to a 4-1 series win over defending Chinese Basketball Association champion Guangdong Hongyuan, bringing the Ducks their first-ever CBA championship. The win capped an emotional road to a title for Marbury, who turned his career and life around by going to China after the 2009 NBA season, thriving in the CBA game to the tune of three straight All-Star appearances and, now, a title.
While Marbury put up MVP-caliber numbers in the CBA finals — he averaged 33.4 points, 6.2 assists and four rebounds a night in the five-game series and poured in 41 points to seal the deciding Game 5 — he couldn't officially be named the series' most valuable player, thanks to a CBA rule stipulating that no foreign-born player can win the CBA's regular-season or postseason MVP awards. Eager to recognize Marbury's championship-winning performance, though, fans at the Chinese basketball website hoopchina.com started an online campaign aimed at building a statue of the former Minnesota Timberwolves, New Jersey Nets, Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics point guard.
Within hours, more than 200,000 fans had thrown their support behind the project; within a week, more than 1 million had voted in favor of pushing the statue into production. As of the latest update, dated April 10, the statue — which captures the moment Marbury lifted the CBA championship trophy, shown above — has been modeled in clay, "transported to the Jiangxi Province [and is] ready to start after the bronze work," according to a translation of a post from the HoopChina forums.
Hit the jump for some shots of the model, thanks to HoopChina, with a hat-tip to Sean Sweeney at Dime.
While Marbury put up MVP-caliber numbers in the CBA finals — he averaged 33.4 points, 6.2 assists and four rebounds a night in the five-game series and poured in 41 points to seal the deciding Game 5 — he couldn't officially be named the series' most valuable player, thanks to a CBA rule stipulating that no foreign-born player can win the CBA's regular-season or postseason MVP awards. Eager to recognize Marbury's championship-winning performance, though, fans at the Chinese basketball website hoopchina.com started an online campaign aimed at building a statue of the former Minnesota Timberwolves, New Jersey Nets, Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks and Boston Celtics point guard.
Within hours, more than 200,000 fans had thrown their support behind the project; within a week, more than 1 million had voted in favor of pushing the statue into production. As of the latest update, dated April 10, the statue — which captures the moment Marbury lifted the CBA championship trophy, shown above — has been modeled in clay, "transported to the Jiangxi Province [and is] ready to start after the bronze work," according to a translation of a post from the HoopChina forums.
Hit the jump for some shots of the model, thanks to HoopChina, with a hat-tip to Sean Sweeney at Dime.
Clay models so far:
Damn, he went from being emo as fuck and eating Vaseline, to the most loved basketball player in China.
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