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Monday, June 4
Updated: June 5, 3:40 PM ET
Marcus content to stay in college
By Pat Forde
Special to ESPN.com
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BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, you will not believe your eyes. Behold, the last of his kind, unlikely to be seen again on Planet Hoops:
The Lottery Pick Who Stayed in School!
Don't be afraid of Chris Marcus, he does not bite. In fact, if you sit down and talk to him, you'll find him intelligent and introspective, albeit a bit shy. You'll also find that he speaks a completely different language from the impatient teenagers who will clutter what could be the most irrelevent NBA draft ever.
|  | | Despite leading the country in rebounding, Chris Marcus knows he can still improve with another year of college. |
"I like college," the 7-foot-1, 280-pound Western Kentucky center said, blaspheming modern basketball in three simple words. "I'm not quite ready to go yet."
The pros beg to differ, of course. They're absolutely sure this fourth-year junior-to-be who led he nation in rebounding (12.1 rpg) is ready for their league – especially in comparison to some of the laughably unprepared kids who have declared for the draft.
"I think he definitely would have been a lottery pick," said analyst Chris Monter, who publishes Monter Draft News. Some pro scouts called Marcus the best true center prospect in college last season.
So how could a certified colossus who averaged 16.7 points and 12.1 rebounds in leading his team to a 24-7 record and an NCAA Tournament bid not be seduced into the draft? Why isn't a Shaq-sized postman with improving skills giddily spending an agent's advance money on an Escalade? Why isn't some Big & Tall clothier putting together the perfect ensemble for a life-altering David Stern handshake?
Because The System never got its grimy hands on Chris Marcus. The System never got a chance to fill his closet with free sneakers, or his head with crap. The System never got a chance to manipulate and accelerate his career, based on future earning potential.
Marcus never played organized basketball until his senior year at Olympic High School in Charlotte, N.C. Western Kentucky coach Dennis Felton, then an assistant at Clemson, came to the school to recruit other players and was told by a frustrated coach that his best college prospect had never put on a uniform.
Felton talked to Marcus and told him that a kid his size could earn a free college education somewhere. Marcus imparted this startling news to his mother, who said Chris was free to play ball if he wanted. He played the one year, put up modest numbers and was recruited by virtually nobody.
When Felton got the head coaching job at Western in 1998, he checked on Marcus. Turned out, all he had to beat was Hampton and a couple of small North Carolina colleges.
Thus did the last of the sleepers arrive in Bowling Green as a blessedly blank canvas. Blooming late allowed him to bypass all the bad habits and bad actors that cling to rising stars in elite youth basketball.
"He hasn't been ruined by so many of the adults that kind of hurt young people, motivated by the wrong reasons," Western coach Dennis Felton said. "That happens more and more to young athletes. He hasn't been fed a line for half his life about his talent."
That helps keep Marcus immune to the contagion spreading through basketball – the one that makes anyone who is a college senior look like some sort of failure. The contagion renders this draft a joke. It's a mishmash of unrefined talent whose primary contribution the next two years will be getting their coaches fired.
"People are so conditioned to seeing that anyone who can play at all jump up and grab the money," Felton said. "They're totally underestimating what this guy is made of."
He's made of sterner stuff than the average basketball star his age.
Marcus said he actually wants to learn the craft of basketball some more before going pro. He's still figuring out what to do against double teams, still working on diversifying his methods for getting the ball in the basket. He's still making over his body, from a blubbery 24 percent body fat when he arrived at Western to 9 percent now.
"I know I have a lot to learn," he said. "When I go pro I want to be able to make an impact, not just sit on the bench."
There are other issues beyond NBA playing time.
Marcus called last year's Sun Belt Conference championships, both the regular season and tournament, "the most fun I've ever had." This year's team, which returns four starters and nine of its top 11 players, could be a fringe top-25 outfit when the season tips off.
The books are even more important. That's why, when you arrive on campus to see him on a late spring morning, Marcus has to be fished out of study hall.
The fourth-year junior-to-be is taking a bear of a statistics course this summer, trying to keep himself on track to graduate with a Sociology degree next May. And get this: if he doesn't get the diploma then, coming back for a fifth year is a possibility. (Marcus sat out his freshman year as a partial qualifier, another factor that has enhanced his growth.)
He is blessed with two preciously rare commodities: patience and perspective.
The commodities come from his family. His father, James, worked 40 years as a janitor in Charlotte, N.C., for Boy Scouts of America, rising at 5:30 every morning for work. If Chris and his younger brother both graduate as expected, five of James Marcus' seven children will have college diplomas.
"It was always understood I would get that degree," Marcus said. "To put in so much work in the classroom, it would seem like a waste not to get it now. It's like walking a long distance and getting to the parking lot of where you wanted to go, then turning around."
He may sound like some kind of midway freak show, but Chris Marcus is for real. Walking across Western Kentucky's graduation podium comes first. David Stern's draft podium can wait.
Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com
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