Stephon Marbury Calls Out Michael Jordan over 'Kids Getting Killed for Jordans'

Stephon Marbury is known for a few things, the foremost among them being his line of affordable Starbury brand basketball shoes.

This isn't to gloss over the Vaseline snacks (warning: video contains profanity) or weeping. Those are very on-brand, Marbury-ish things. 

But his shoes are his legacy—a line of $15 sneakers the then-NBA guard debuted in 2006 that offered a low-cost option for people who didn't want to drop most of a week's paycheck on basketball shoes.

The line folded in 2009 as Marbury's NBA career fizzled out, but as Marbury teased in an Instagram post in late September, the Chinese Basketball Association's most visible player plans to bring Starburys back on the market some time in the near future.

Mitchell Layton/Getty Images

To pump up the relaunch, Marbury's been on the media circuit talking up the shoe's quality and deriding other sneaker brands as obscenely overpriced.

His latest shot across the bow at the sneaker industry comes at one person in particular. Marbury says he's disappointed in Michael Jordan and tired of kids getting killed over his brand of sneakers.

Marbury called Jordan out over Twitter on Sunday night, labeling him a profiteer whose shoes have been "robbing the hood" of money and sparking violence for decades.

Marbury's final dig: Jordan isn't the end-all, be-all. He just put balls through hoops better than everyone else.

These are some interesting allegations from Marbury.

A cynic might call this the lowest form of free advertising—Marbury calling out Jordan and claiming the moral high ground to pump up his own product and wallet.

Someone less jaded would cede that, yes, basketball shoes are getting ridiculously expensive, and an inexpensive option that lightens a household's financial burden is a good thing to have.

Then, of course, there's the whole question of Jordan's moral culpability in whatever violence occurs over his product—a subject fit for a master's thesis if I've ever heard one.

In any case, Marbury's opinion is clear: Expensive shoes cause trouble, Jordan is part of the problem and kids need to get their priorities straight.

-----------Update: Tuesday, Oct. 13-------------------------------------------------------

Marbury hasn't let up, targeting Jordan and his signature shoes again with another tweet one week after initially calling him out.

Dan is on Twitter. This is why he bought T-MACs.