The big news this morning is, of course, about the verdict in favor of Anucha Browne Sanders. ESPN's Chris Sheridan does a great job addressing what this might mean for the Knicks, MSG, and Thomas.

But I have spent the whole morning thinking about one of this play's bit players: Stephon Marbury. What's next for him?

Consider, if you will, the roller coaster ride he has been on lately.

About a year ago Stephon Marbury made a very bold business move. He aligned himself with some of the cheapest sneakers on the planet. It was a high-stakes gamble for a player with a dwindling ability to move products of any kind (he has never won much, and his play has been harmful to his team for some time). But it hit just the right note, and pleased the millions who wish that cool basketball shoes just weren't so darned expensive. Rather than a marketing deal, it became a movement, and the words "Stephon Marbury" changed -- what was once a selfish brand became one with a bigger global purpose. The man who had experienced a lot of hate from fans and the media started feeling the love.

He took that love, and ran with it. He's still running.

In late spring he launched his own TV show. It flopped. Publicly, he has been undiscouraged.

Then Marbury made the legendary and bizarre appearance on the show "Mike'd Up" in early July. In a great boon to Marbury's career (and, presumably, a tribute to PR people somewhere) that interview is no longer available on YouTube, nor on the website of the show Mike'd Up.

Here's one pretty charitable interpretation of what happened. Now that you can't watch it any more, I guess you could just say that he acted bizarrely. When his wife called on his cell phone mid-interview (strange enough already), Marbury took the call, stumbling over the words "my better half" so that it sure sounded like "my better ho."

At another point, he seemed to not understand the meaning of the basketball slang "dime." And throughout, he acted like someone who had no sense whatsoever of decorum or shame. It was all pretty joyful, and harmless enough. Plenty of people who saw it leapt to the conclusion that he was likely on some kind of drugs.

Later in July, Marbury told Gus Johnson on MSG about his relationship with Jesus. You can watch the whole interview. He says things like: "I was born in church. I was raised in church. I'm a God-fearing man." He also muses openly that he and his wife might both become preachers later in life. Then he added, for good measure, a bunch of things that aren't entirely explained, like:

• "When you're happy and you're smiling people don't like that. That's why I smile all the time."
• "I believe in trilogy. My third eye. That's my spirit."

Talking to Johnson, Marbury also waved off his bizarre performance on Mike'd Up, apparently blaming it on the medium: "They said I was on crack. They said I was on cocaine. ... It's TV, that's it. It's just a camera. They go "cut." And they go edit. We were having fun." He said that if he could go back in time, he wouldn't change one thing about his performance on "Mike'd Up," saying that performance was evidence of his evolving inner peace.

Then, of course, Marbury made headlines again, for his part in the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment trial. No one at the trial disputed that Marbury (a married father) had sex in the back of his truck with a Madison Square Garden intern in April 2005.

There was even a lot talk about Marbury trashing Browne Sanders, calling her nasty names, because unlike most of the other people at the Garden discussed in the trial, she wouldn't leap to serve him at every opportunity (in the case discussed in the trial, she refused his request for free tickets). Then, most bizarrely, even though he was testifying at a real trial, with people who are really hurt, he left the scene with more of his maniacal giggling and hamming it up for reporters.

Later, he apologized on TV for causing hurt to women including Anucha Browne Sanders, and took truckloads of free gear to bad neighborhoods. What's not to like about that? (At least one commentator, Bethlehem Shoals of FanHouse speculated ... maybe instead of drugs, Marbury has been re-born? Shoals was picking up that Marbury's God-talk had surpassed garden variety athlete devotion.)

The problem is that, as much as he might make friends with some of the things he says, he cuts the connection with weirdness. Watch at the 3:39 mark. He boogies a certain way in his chair, does a trippy little move with his hands, and mid-sentence (he had been talking about his scoring average) he says "I do that to be closer to God."

Interviewer response: "Aiight."

At the Knicks' media day yesterday, as Mike Dougherty reports on his Knicks Knacks blog, Stephon Marbury told reporters he was born again this past June.

"What was the highlight of my summer? he said. "When I gave myself to Jesus Christ."

Marbury even noted the sudden transformation occurred June 29.

And what inspired the change of heart?

"What happened to me was I got to see myself outside of myself, he said. "I was able to look in the mirror and really see myself.

Don't ask what he saw.

"I mean, that's personal, Marbury said. "I'm not going to ask you what your wife wears when she's getting dressed or what your son (does) inside (his) bedroom getting ready for school. That's my personal business. I don't feel like anybody should be able to ask a question like that. I think that's disrespectful to ask me a question like that. I don't think you should get out of line by asking me a question like that. That's personal."

So, put it all together, and you get ... what exactly?

My best guess is that Stephon Marbury never really got a chance to grow up properly. Like a lot of athletes, he was certainly undereducated. Given his active mind, he probably would have done well to have gone through some phases unnoticed on some college campus somewhere. Instead he went from star treatment at high school in Coney Island to star treatment at Georgia Tech for a year to star treatment in the NBA. The spotlight and its multi-faceted demands were always on him, and he never really got to try on different personalities for size. He had to do this and be that.

But lately, he's not playing the peer pressure game any more. He has the sneaker thing working for him, and a dwindling on-court career that no longer needs define him. He's free to be something new for the first time in a long time. And he's throwing open the doors to new experiences, and instead of a warrior he's seeing what it's like to be a wanderer once in a while.

He has been talking about his family with a newfound zeal. He says he had a great time with his family in Italy, and says he will play there one day. He has started listening to his sister Stephanie, who has been a devout Christian, he says, for decades. And he is clearly doing some soul-searching. Engaging, in his words, that "third eye."

Knicks fans are tough and proud of their hard edge. But if I were a Knicks fan, I'd just roll with it. As long as he seems to be making a sincere effort to sort out what is right, and to do that, support the guy. Why not? When your aging superstar is not playing well, it's a good thing if he's suddenly open to trying new things. Maybe, at some point, he'll try the thing that everyone has always wanted of him, professionally: to prirotize winning above statistics, looking good, and building his legacy.

He's not there yet. Sure he has made some noises about scoring fewer points and getting more assists now that Zach Randolph is in the fold. But when he was asked recently what he was working on this summer, he made clear that he was not interested on working on things that he was not good at, and instead was perfecting his scoring ability.

Still no promises it will turn out well. But things are churning in this guy, and he sure seems to be happier than ever before. I don't feel like I know the guy at all. But I have no problem seeing him smile as he figures out what it means to be Stephon Marbury in 2007.