Thursday, October 17, 2002 Updated: October 21, 4:17 PM ET
Post Grad
By By Curry Kirkpatrick
He was The Seven-Footer From the Pet Department to all those Wal-Mart shoppers who needed him to get the port-o-
piranhas off the top shelf. He was The Ghost to all those kids in high school who nearly jumped out of their skin every time he wandered up behind them. He was Meat Head to a loving father who wondered aloud how his massive son could neglect fruits and vegetables, as well as most other food fundamentals except meat, yet still keep growing more and more massive. And then one day somebody came along -- either a frustrated high school coach, or an enterprising college recruiter, or maybe one of his six brothers and sisters -- and convinced Chris Marcus that, with a little industry, a lot of luck and a nifty drop step or two, he could further his education for free. That's when he set aside all those other fairly weird personas and started to become ... The Basketball Player.
Marcus has his sights set on March.
"That's what clicked for me," says Marcus, the 7'1", 285-pound center now in his fifth year at Western Kentucky. "Graduating high school has become the lowest bar these days. I wanted more than that. All my brothers and
sisters had gone farther than me, and I wanted to match them." He laughs. "I always thought it would be impossible, but now it looks like I'm going farther than them."
If not for a stress fracture in his left foot that sidelined him for 17 games last season, Marcus would be earning a fat NBA paycheck this fall. Instead, he's busy rehabbing and taking courses toward a masters' degree in recreation (he has a BA in sociology/criminology) while hoping to lift the Hilltoppers into the Top 10 -- another seemingly impossible goal now within his grasp. He has already reached several milestones in his first three seasons: leading the nation in rebounding (12.1 a game in 2000-01), setting a school record for blocks (212 and counting), averaging a double-double for his career (14.7 ppg, 10.4 rpg) and making back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tourney. The kid who didn't play organized ball until his senior year in high school is now the best big man in college hoops. Who knew that after years of indifference, he would actually learn to like the game?
***
"He was just this huge kid walking the halls." That's how David Davis, former coach at Olympic High in Charlotte, remembers the painfully shy Marcus. "Usually by himself, no eye contact with anybody else. He was very self-conscious of his height. Didn't want any attention. Got tired of kids asking him why he didn't play ball."
"Got angry about that," says Marcus, in what amounts to a soliloquy. "Sports just weren't that important to me. I played football but didn't like to get hit. I shot the basketball around in the park, but it was just something to do."
His oldest brother, Michael, a 6'8" athlete who played one year of football at South Carolina State, puts it best: "We knew he needed something to grow out of his shyness. Chris was a blank piece of paper just waiting to be painted upon."
And wouldn't you know, the kid was the one holding the brush. "I wanted to be an artist," Marcus says. He painted landscapes and flowers. He dabbled in graphic arts. He even sketched basketball scenes. Meanwhile, all Davis could see was a portrait of the artist as a young hoopster.
The coach finally persuaded Marcus to come out for the team his junior year. But practice had barely started when Marcus quit to answer the call of the wild -- make that Wal-Mart. "My parents always drilled it into us: school and job, school and job," he says. "So I got a job. I loved Wal-Mart. I did the carts in the parking lot outside, but there was a problem stopping them from running downhill. Besides, too many people. So I asked to work the pet department in the back of the store, where I could be alone. Learned a lot about dog food, bird cages, cleaning fish tanks. You know, there's lots to learn about taking care of goldfish."
That may very well be true, but Davis wasn't buying any of it: "Chris wouldn't play for us, but I kept seeing him at our games. I told him, 'Don't give me this job crap. If you've got the time to watch, you've got the time to play.' "
Finally, in his senior year, Marcus gave in. Davis convinced him his size alone would get him a scholarship, that he had the potential to make the NBA, that "he could earn enough money to come back here someday, hire all his homeboys to work for him and buy the Wal-Mart." Besides, Marcus didn't have to be The Man right away -- not with 6'11" George Leach (now at Indiana) and 6'8" Calvin Clemmons (Charlotte) as teammates.
Coming off the bench that season, Marcus was raw at best. "I didn't know what a 'post-up' meant, had no idea where the 'perimeter' or the 'blocks' were," he says. But slowly, meticulously, he learned the game -- and not just the X's and O's. Davis was always giving him some kind of history lesson, showing him tapes of Bill Russell. Before long, the guy who had wanted to hide with the pets was bonding with the humans. "I liked the team thing, hanging out with the guys, talking about practices, going on trips. Coach Davis made the whole experience a lot of fun."
And then one night it happened. Playing against one of North Carolina's prep powerhouses, Hunter Huss High of Gastonia, Marcus shut down big-shot recruit Kris Lang. "They told me afterward that Lang had a scholarship to Chapel Hill," he recalls. "I said, 'For real?' " Yeah, for real. "The kids were all pounding Chris on the back," Davis says. "I think the light finally came on for him."
Which meant lights out for all those college bird dogs who'd been tracking Leach and Clemmons but somehow failed to notice Marcus. Actually, Rick Barnes stopped by Olympic one day to encourage the kid to stick with hoops. That was before the coach moved from Clemson to Texas, and right about the time that Marcus was thinking how cool it would be to attend college so close to home. "I remember I got called out of art class to talk to him," Marcus says. "I was sketching a flower vase."
But it was Clemson assistant Dennis Felton who followed up in full bloom. "I saw Chris play for 10 minutes one game," says Felton, now the head man at Western Kentucky. "I loved his hands and his touch. For a guy with no real athletic skills, he could actually catch and shoot. He wasn't a qualifier out of high school, so we couldn't recruit him in the ACC. But when I got the job here, he was the first guy I wanted."
The recruitment was relatively easy. The Hilltoppers had to beat out only Hampton, whose coach at the time, Steve Merfeld (now with Evansville), remembers Marcus drawing a Pirate head "that should have been framed." As Felton tells it: "Here was a shy, seven-foot kid who had played one year of ball. Obviously, it was because he knew he wasn't any good, and he didn't want the scrutiny and cruelty of people asking why he was so tall and not so good. So I didn't emphasize achievement or goals -- only the fun of the game."
Hmmm ... that sounded familiar. "Coach Felton was like Coach Davis," Marcus says. "He didn't scream and yell and get in my face, or I probably would have quit again." (Not that he would have gotten very far even if he had left campus. With so many brothers and sisters to cart him around as a kid, he had never bothered to get his driver's
license. Still hasn't, in fact.)
One more year to close the book on some unfinished business.
As a redshirt partial qualifier taking remedial courses that didn't count toward his degree, Marcus was desperately homesick that first year in Bowling Green. "You can imagine how quiet Chris was back then," Felton says. "Engaging in dialogue was a chore. I told him his basketball development would rely more on his personal growth, his comfort around people, than anything we taught him on the court."
"I don't think he ever talked to me my first year except to say 'hi' and 'bye'," says teammate David Boyden, the 6'7" senior forward who took over last season when Marcus hurt his foot and led the Hilltoppers to 18 straight victories. (They finished 284.) "Now, Chris will crack up and be just as silly as anybody else on the team. But he's still uncomfortable when all eyes are on him. He'd prefer to remain in the shadows."
In Bowling Green, a picturesque town with obviously conflicted sensibilities -- it is home to both the Chevy Corvette plant and Fruit of the Loom underwear -- Marcus has become a human billboard for fast learning. Besides converting from a D prep student to a potential masters candidate, he has wasted little time perfecting the
essentials of the pivot. Says Felton: "He's still learning how to play to his width [a pterodactyl-terrifying 7'8"]. And he's still not the type of character who enjoys cutting you with his elbow, slamming you to the floor and feeling good about it. You know, intimidating. But in the A-to-Z teaching process, he always wants to know why, what for, all the B-C-D's in how to get there. One day we switched to working on jump hooks with the left hand, which he'd never tried. Chris just smirked. Ten minutes later, he made 20 of 25."
Pete Herrmann, the Hilltoppers' associate head coach, has tutored both David Robinson (Navy) and Shaq (the 1990 Olympic Festival). So what does he make of Marcus? "Because he's so quiet, Chris is tough to read on how we're getting through," Herrmann says. "Is he giving us his best effort? Does he want to be great? But every time there's a challenge, he meets the test."
As a sophomore, Marcus was the target of trash-talking by Louisville's Ellis Myles. Wrong move. "Chris went right back at him, got a technical foul at a bad time," Felton says. "But he'd never been so emotional and passionate. It was a significant moment because he went on to turn the game around." And Western Kentucky went on to finish the season with a stunning 247 record. "People question the big kid's Sun Belt competition,"
says Florida coach Billy Donovan, whose Gators knocked off the Hilltoppers in the Tourney that year. "But Marcus is a load. I always said he'd be the best center in our league, too."
And what about the biggest league? "Once you get past Shaq, all the true huge centers are disappearing," says Sacramento Kings scout Keith Drum. "Chris has got a lot of Michael Olowokandi about him. Running isn't his specialty. But once he establishes position at either end, he's a factor. Basketball-wise, the kid is a baby. The upside is phenomenal. If he gets healthy and shows he wants to be a pro, he's a top-five pick, easy."
Last year, Marcus' inside presence made the difference in Western's 64-52 opening-game upset of Kentucky in Lexington. Five games into the season, he had 22 points and 11 rebounds in a loss at Creighton. But then the stress fracture was discovered and he was shut down until February. Although he would return to put up some hefty numbers in the Sun Belt tourney, "I wish now I hadn't even tried to play hurt," he says. Matched against Stanford seven-footer Curtis Borchardt (now with the Utah Jazz) in the first round of the NCAA Tourney, a semi-immobile Marcus picked up two early fouls and sat out almost 16 minutes of the first half. Down 36-22 at the break, Western pulled within one but couldn't get over the hump, as Marcus finished with 10 points and two boards (to Borchardt's 19 and 12) in an 84-68 loss.
Even so, he was still considered a cinch NBA lottery pick until doctors recommended off-season surgery in June. So he returned for a final college season, one that he had earned by squeezing in 18 credit hours last semester to graduate with his class on time. Marcus lost 15 pounds after going under the knife, but he is healing at a snail's pace. As of Oct. 12, the official start of fall practice, he had yet to set foot on the court, and he remains a question mark for Western's opener against Arizona Nov. 23.
Healthy or not, Marcus has seen his image -- if not his personality -- change drastically. "Last March, I got to go to the NCAAs and watch George Leach and Indiana beat Duke. Afterward, he came up in the stands and we hugged. It was great, but I didn't stay for the next round. Too many people knew me. I heard them -- it was uncomfortable."
Except now the old name-calling had given way to wide-eyed reverence. "Hey, isn't that the Big All-America From Western Kentucky?"
