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Stephon Marbury sounded content and tranquil last week as he described his new life in China. Perhaps it was because he was tired; after all, it was nearly midnight in Beijing.

Or maybe Marbury was simply content.

“I have no complaints,” he said. “I’m blessed; life is good.”

On the court, Marbury is the catalyst for the undefeated Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association, who are off to their best start in 16 years. They won their sixth game on Friday, defeating Kenyon Martin’s Xinjiang team 99-97. Marbury is averaging 22.3 points, 5.7 assists and 1.9 steals a game for the Ducks, who signed him in August.

Marbury, 34, is flourishing off the court as well. He said acclimating to a new culture was the best thing about this part of his odyssey, which has taken him from Lincoln High School on Coney Island to Georgia Tech to the NBA. After an often-tumultuous 13 years in the NBA, Marbury has found a home and a revitalized career in China, which he said is his soul’s new resting place.

“It’s just something about the serenity and peace of the country,” he said. “I can’t really explain it; you’ve got to experience it.”

Marbury is in a great space: his own driver, an apartment in Beijing in the equivalent of the Wall Street district and a team that could help him win his first pro basketball championship.

“I never thought in my life that I’d end up going to China and wanting to spend the rest of my life here,” he said.

Marbury also writes a weekly newspaper column in the China Daily. Given his often contentious relations with the news media in the United States, this gig is one of the greatest punch lines of the new chapter of his life.

Other former NBA players are playing in China. During the recently ended lockout, four-high profile players signed with Chinese Basketball Association teams: Kenyon Martin with Xinjiang, Wilson Chandler with Zhejiang Guangsha, J.R. Smith with Zhejiang Chouzhou and Aaron Brooks with four-time defending champion Guangdong. Unlike players who sign with European teams, they are contractually obligated to play the full Chinese season, which ends in March.

What may come as the biggest surprise to those who remember Marbury’s NBA days is that he has become a source of support for Chandler, Smith and Brooks. He has helped Brooks, formerly of the Houston Rockets, and Chandler, formerly of the Knicks and the Denver Nuggets, adjust to life in China. In fact, he talks with Chandler every other day.

Marbury even recently counseled Smith, a former Nugget, after he had clashes with his team, which threatened to void his contract. The team suspected Smith was purposely missing practices and games once he realized he would be held to his contract.

“I told [Smith] to make himself completely vulnerable to love: Embrace the culture,” Marbury said. “You’ve got to acclimate yourself to something different, you’ve got to grow into it, and then you get this stillness and calmness about yourself.”

That sounds good, but Marbury, Smith, Brooks and Chandler are at different points in their careers. Chandler, Brooks and Smith are looking for big paychecks and the glamour that comes with being an NBA player. Marbury, who has had all of that, was looking for a sanctuary.

His last three seasons in the NBA were a nightmare, even as he fulfilled a boyhood dream of playing for the Knicks. He feuded with two Knicks coaches and had a falling-out with his mentor, Isiah Thomas. As part of a sexual harassment suit against Madison Square Garden, he had to testify that he had sex with an intern. In a bizarre video he made in 2009, he appeared to weep intensely and at one point ate Vaseline. Clearly, he needed a change.

In early 2009, the Knicks bought out Marbury’s contract, under which he was due $20.8 million for that season, and he signed with the Boston Celtics. Boston offered a one-year deal for the 2009-10 season, but Marbury was wise enough to say enough. He needed a break — from the NBA, from New York, from the United States. In January 2010, he signed with the Shanxi Zhongyu Brave Dragons of the Chinese league. He left the Brave Dragons last December to join Beijing.

Bill Duffy, a long-time sports agent with deep roots in China, has followed Marbury since his high school days.

“The guy was losing his mind before he left,” Duffy said of Marbury. “He just needed to get someplace where people don’t know him and he can just be a regular person but still have that allure as a basketball player.”

The lives of young professional athletes are a succession of chapters. For Marbury, there was the New York City playground and high school legend; the college star; and the NBA player who did well but never lived up to manufactured expectations.

The final chapter of Marbury’s basketball life is unfolding in China, a place he now calls home.

The New York Times