The Stephon Marbury Saga Gets Either Sadder or Stranger

Look, Stephon Marbury, I can understand you taking a year from basketball to, um, "build your empire" or whatever it is you're doing. But you probably can't do that by disrupting NBA games for no good reason.

Worse, ESPN.com's Chris Sheridan reports that when you showed up at Madison Square Garden for the Knicks' home opener on Saturday, you couldn't even get the party-crashing to go right, sitting in the wrong seats, being asked to move, and generally acting as an oddly benign distraction.

Rather than relocate, Marbury left the arena just as the first quarter was ending.

Adding to the bizarre scene, Marbury pulled out a video camera shortly after arriving and began shooting the live action, at one point standing up -- thereby blocking the view of the fans behind him -- while play was ongoing.

A Madison Square Garden security official spoke to Marbury during a timeout, and it was then discovered that Marbury was holding a ticket for Row A. But the seat he was occupying -- just a couple chairs down from Spike Lee's regular seat -- was actually in Row AA, and Marbury was asked to move.

So, to recap, Stephon, you: 1) went to an NBA game for some reason that was probably not based on taking it in; 2) sat in the wrong seats; 3) started taping the game for unknown reasons; 4) left the arena entirely instead of moving one row back when asked to do so.

That sounds a little too quiet and scatter-brained to be an emperor's state of mind to me. Hey, you're the one with the shoe line with secure nationwide distribution, right?

In all seriousness, I hope Marbury can figure out how to live his life, with or without basketball, in a safe and sensible manner. The more I read and see about his erratic orbit, the more I fear he won't.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.