Basketball toddler turned enfant terrible - Rising Star: Chris Marcus

Basketball Digest, Dec, 2001 by Tom Kertes

ITS ONE THING TO BE A DIKEMBE Mutombo choosing soccer over basketball growing up in Zaire. But why in the world would Chris Marcus, now a 7'1", 320-pound manchild, refuse to play on his high school basketball team?

"I just wasn't interested," Marcus says, grinning at the memory. "And I wasn't going to do something just because everybody was telling me I should."

Now the selfsame Marcus is the leader of coach Raymond Felton's potentially explosive Western Kentucky team. As an out-of-shape hoop novice with 24% body fat, he played less than 20 minutes and averaged just eight points in his only year of high school "action." Less than four years later, Marcus has morphed into a man-mountain of amazing agility, easily the No. 1 college center in the country.

Marcus is "the quickest learner I've ever encountered. You work with Chris on something, you see improvement in 10 minutes," Felton says. As a result, this basketball toddler is already a terrifying powerhouse on the boards, leading the country in rebounding last year (12.1 rpg).

"He boards above the rim, in traffic, he grabs balls away from other people as if they're not even there," Felton says. "Chris has terrific hands and an innate sense for where the ball's going to come off the rim. And, with those long arms, he not only plays big--he plays wide."

Marcus had 20 double-doubles last year (in 31 games), averaged 16.7 points, and rejected 97 shots. He's silky with a turnaround jumper and has a jump hook that's fast approaching unstoppable.

So why is such a phenom still in school? "We all knew that Chris would have been a Top 10 pick, maybe even the No. 1 pick, in the draft last June," Felton says. "But the NBA was barely an issue with him. Chris is too smart to rush and ruin what could be a brilliant pro career."

"Im not ready," Marcus agrees. "I still have so much to learn, I'm really young at this game." Young or no, Marcus is the player with the most outrageous upside in the country this season.