As a Lakers fan I haven’t been too inclined to follow the career of Stephon Marbury in the past. I’ve spent the last week following along with Marbury’s twitter account and even watched a few hours of his live webcam show the other day.

What came next caught me entirely by surprise.

A few friends invited me to go play some volleyball the other night at the Taft High School gym. I graduated from Taft in 2005 and had the luxury of following along with Jordan Farmar’s career throughout his high school, college, and NBA days. Expectations were low for the evening as it was a homecoming to a place I was hoping to never return to. This experience however was entirely different than what I was use to seeing at my alma mater.

I was approaching the gym and noticed many nice cars lined up. Cars that you generally don’t see in a high school parking lot. Escalades, a Range Rover, a Lexus, and one of the most gorgeous Mercedes I’ve ever seen, a finely tuned S65. I knew something interesting was going on inside. First thought that ran through my mind: Perhaps Jordan Farmar came back to film a commercial or pay homage to his high school.

And then I walked into the gym. Standing tall under the basket wearing green Celtics shorts with matching sneakers was Stephon Marbury.

I couldn’t believe it. The guy I had been watching online for days now was standing right in front of me. The guy who I’ve seen leave about a thousand twitter messages in a three day span was five feet away from me. The guy who’s not planning on returning to the league and has demanded more media coverage than any active NBA player was right there!

There was only one thing for me to do, text the SportsTsar, let him know what was happening at the Taft gym, and tell him to look out for the live Justin.tv feed to see if he can spot me standing directly behind Starbury.

Unfortunately, the feed wasn’t the cleanest (thank you Verizon for continuing to provide shitty reception and wireless internet service in the middle of the Los Angeles county) but you can definitely tell that the setting was in the high school gym just a few minutes from our house.

I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to get some insider thoughts on Stephon Marbury. Starbury has been taking a lot of heat lately from the media about how he’s lost his mind and how he isn’t all there. He’s a crazy ex NBA player that gives the entire league a bad rep.

Let me tell you, all these comments from the media were straight lies.

I had the pleasure of watching Marbury in a different light than most of the media. Starbury is generally followed in a fancy team’s gym, or in the weight room, or in public, or during actual media sessions. I had a special opportunity to catch him as a coach.

Starbury’s guests at the Taft gym included recently drafted Jrue Holliday and his younger brother Justin. The third shooter, unidentified but believed to be Starbury’s brother (anyone know?). The experience was incredible.

These guys were working their asses off and weren’t wasting a single second of open gym time. The sweat on them was literally just dripping and creating puddles all over the court. Shaq sweating in HD TV was nothing compared to these guys. It may have had something to do with the 95 degree temperature but there incredible work ethic probably contributed a bit as well.

The practice routing was quite simple, Starbury would take a ball, show the guys what to work on, and then rebound. He’d comment along the way and give them all tips on what they were doing wrong. I was actually quite impressed by his ability to interact with the players and explain to them how the game is really played.

The key to the day for me was watching Starbury match up with Jrue Holliday and teach him a quick lesson on the difference between the NBA and college ball. It was clearly something Holliday had not seen before and was a lesson he will remember for years to come. The pros are not a joke and Starbury made that clear.

He made Holliday work on his quick slash move to the basket for a while and then made him shoot deep threes. How deep exactly? They took some shots from half court and then took a few steps forward and launched up threes from there.

Starbury taught another quick lesson when he said, “to succeed in the NBA all you need is two things, range and a quick move. Deep threes. They can’t stop you.”

When he noticed the guys getting just a bit lazy he’d yell at them: “Lock in. Focus. Concentrate.”

There even came a point that he put up a few shots and swooshed them all. Let’s not forget, the man did average 19.3 points and 7.6 assists for his career. Those are some pretty damn impressive numbers.

He went one on one with Holliday and flew by like he wasn’t even being defended. He walked away from the play talking to himself, “Think the guy can’t play no more. Let ‘em keep thinking that.”

Being in the gym with him it was clearly evident that there was a big shadow hovering over him. The media has created this false image of who Stephon Marbury truly is. It was a true pleasure being able to see him act as a coach and mentor these young guys that are working hard to make an impact in the league.

To be honest, I even feel like Starbury would make a pretty good assistant coach in the NBA. He’s quite inspiring and has a hell of a work ethic. He doesn’t take anything from anyone and is motivated beyond belief.

Stephon Marbury: Forget the critics. Forget the media. You’ve got the money to live your life. You’ve got the skills in the game you love. You’ve got your life to live. Live it. Love it.