Jumping through hoops
| Sunday, Jan 25 2009 02:10 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:33 PM
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Michael Marcus, a freshman, is the starting point guard at Frontier High.
Sam Marcus, a junior at Liberty, averages 9.7 points, 6.2 assists and 3.4 steals a game.
Marissa Marcus, left, and David Marcus, right, with three of their four boys including Aaron, left, Sam, center, and his younger brother Michael, seated on the couch.
Sam Marcus, left, is the point guard for the Liberty High varsity basketball team and his brother Michael is a freshman on the Frontier High team.
Nearly every night, David Marcus can hear it from his bedroom. Sometimes, he can even feel the vibrations.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. Swish. Thunk, thunk, thunk.
Not that it bothers him. Au contraire. Marcus is proud of how hard and long his sons, Sam and Michael, are working to further their dreams.
The noise is just part of being the father in the Marcus household, where basketball is a family member.
Sam is a junior at Liberty who starts at point guard for the 17-3 Patriots. He fills up the box score with averages of 9.7 points, 6.2 assists and 3.4 steals a game.
Michael is a freshman at Frontier and is leading the Titans in scoring as a rookie. Frontier is 9-12 a year after going 0-24.
And then there are the role players — older brother Joseph, who graduated from Liberty in 2007, youngest brother Aaron, a fifth-grader who plays for club teams, and the parents.
They split time filming every one of their sons’ games, so the boys can review and critique each other. Marissa, the mom, takes the tapes and transfers them to DVDs. Then David takes Sam’s highlights and sends them to colleges and media outlets.
“Sometimes it’s like having a second job,” David said. “But I just like to give them every opportunity I can so they can have success.”
And they have.
Joseph is studying engineering at UC Santa Barbara, and Sam and Michael both have sterling grades, too.
You’d never guess basketball just by looking at Sam and Michael.
Sam is listed at 5-foot-9, though he must have been wearing platform shoes when that measurement was taken. Michael is 5'6 — a stature that doesn’t strike fear in opponents who often are more than a foot taller.
“The first game we played, the guy guarding him gets right up on him,” Frontier coach Jeremy Pierce said. “He thinks he’s bigger and more athletic and it’ll be easy. But then Mike goes right by him.
“So then he says, ‘I’m gonna give him some space.’ And Mike still goes right by him.
“Finally, they call a timeout, and one of our assistant coaches overhears the kid: ‘Damn it, I can’t stay in front of this kid.’”
Those hours in the garage — and on the driveway and with club teams — have paid off. Both Sam and Michael are lightning-quick point guards who can knife through traffic, find an open teammate or, if need be, score points.
“Sam’s gift is that he knows how to run a ball club,” Liberty coach Andy Hicks said. “He runs the floor well, makes great decisions and his teammates love playing with him because he’s so unselfish.”
At Frontier, Michael has perhaps made even more of an impact. He averages 13.4 points a game and has aptly filled a position of need.
“To be honest, we didn’t know what we had originally,” Pierce said. “When you look at him staturewise, you go, ‘Really?’ But when he plays, he’s good.”
The boys started playing National Junior Basketball in Bakersfield when they were in grade school. They also made stops with the Ballers for Christ and Gladiators club teams, the latter for the past seven years.
“I was pretty good in fourth grade,” Sam said. “Ever since then, I’ve just focused on getting better every year.
“I’m a pass-first kind of guy. Whatever it takes to win, that’s what I’ll do.”
Said Michael: “They doubt me because I’m short, but it gives me confidence.”
With a Marcus in control, both teams have exceeded expectations thus far this year. But why separate schools?
“I chose to come here. I just wanted to play,” said Michael, who also wants to go to a separate college from Sam.
For the basketball family, it doesn’t matter if the boys wear the same color jersey. Michael originally attended Liberty but because of a minor personal issue, his parents asked the Kern High School District to move him to Frontier. The district agreed.
Liberty and Frontier don’t play each other this season, but that doesn’t mean the Sam and Michael story won’t converge again.
Sam mentioned that the two would play together next year — for that to happen, Michael would have to transfer to Liberty for Sam’s senior year — but David downplayed that possibility.
“Everywhere (Michael) went at Liberty, he would have been Sammy’s little brother,” the father said. “Right now he’s a Frontier student, and he’s going to be a Frontier student. I don’t see (a transfer) happening.”
For now, David and Marissa are content to oversee the operation — one night to Sam’s game, the next to Michael’s, then back to promoting his undersized, overachieving sons at home.
“We have kids that are never going to be the tallest or strongest or the fastest,” David Marcus said. “But we can sure help them to be the smartest ones. And we couldn’t ask for anything better.”
And that, David will tell you, makes all the thunk thunk thunk more than worth it.
