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Morris twins lead F.O.E. to Rumph title

08/11/2015, 4:45pm EDT
By Ari Rosenfeld and Varun Kumar

Markieff Morris (above) and twin brother Marcus lead Team F.O.E. to the 2015 Danny Rumph Classic title. (Photo: Josh Verlin

Varun Kumar (@vrkumar8) &
Ari Rosenfeld
(@realA_rosenfeld)
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Even though he’ll soon be headed back to Phoenix to resume his NBA career, Markieff Morris is already formulating plans for next year’s Rumph Classic.

“We can bring as many NBA players as need be,” he said. “We need to fill our team up with NBA players, then more guys will come. Hopefully more NBA guys will come next year and we’ll go out there to give the people what they want to see.”

What the fans saw in this year’s championship game, was a wire-to-wire, dominating 119-101 win by Morris’ F.O.E. (“Family Over Everything”) squad over Southside.

F.O.E. started the game off with a 13-2 run, capped off by a Mario Little deep two, sending the usually raucous and passionate F.O.E. fans into a frenzy and onto the court.

Southside was able to close the gap to within three a few times in the first half, both on Rasual Butler three-point plays- one from the right wing, and another on an and-one. Butler, a 13-year pro who is a graduate of Roman Catholic and La Salle, finished the contest with a game-high 38 points.

However, F.O.E took charge of the game once again late in the first half and took a 60-49 lead at the break, with Morris, the Philadelphia native and Prep Charter graduate, the leading F.O.E. with sixteen points.

“Our gameplan was to just to step on them from the start,” he said. “It was to get going from the beginning and we did that. You could say we did a little too much. Our guys did a great job pushing the ball and getting easy baskets in transition.”

The second half was much of the same, with Southside unable to stop dribble-penetration from F.O.E’s guards, allowing for several easy dump-offs or kick-outs on open threes.

Morris finished with 22 points, while his ex-Kansas teammate Little added 21 in a strong effort.

“It’s a big deal, as you can see from the heart we displayed. We want to win it every year and make the event bigger and bigger. We came out and enjoyed it and had a great time,” Morris said about the event.

The Rumph Classic is named in honor of former Parkway and Western Kentucky guard Danny Rumph, who tragically passed away in 2005 at a rec center in Philadelphia from a heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

The five-day event serves to not only remember Rumph, but to help raise awareness for the disease and to place automated external defibrillators, which would have saved Rumph’s life, in public places throughout the city.

To date, the Rumph Foundation has supplied AED programs to 12 rec centers throughout the city as part of its mission to “save the next bright star.”

While the event’s organizer, Mike Morak did not want to share exact numbers in regards to how much the tournament raises, he expressed that the success of this year’s edition will go a long way towards funding everything else that the Rumph Foundation does throughout the year.

“From what I’ve been told, it’s something that’s going to allow us to keep doing heart screenings for the kids and also help us put more money into what we’re calling ‘Danny Rumph Basketball’, which is a lot of our youth programs,” Morak said.

The game was marked by a significant amount of trash-talking between both teams and complaints to the referees, resulting in several technical fouls on both sides.

One of the most heated battles was between Morris and Butler, with Morris proclaiming to Butler during a dead-ball something along the lines of how this was “his city,” and with Butler reminding Morris “to respect his elders.”

After the game, calmer heads prevailed with Butler congratulating Morris on the victory while he playfully tried to take Morris’ F.O.E hat.

Morris downplayed the significance of the trash-talking, saying that it was all just part of the game and that he obviously has respect for Butler.

“No big deal at all. It was just two Philly guys jawing at each other.”

For Morak, though, the banter represents a lot of what the basketball aspect of the event is all about: pure, unadulterated Philly basketball.

It’s not every day that local fans can sit courtside and watch NBA players, many of whom grew up around the corner from said fans, battle it out with each other in such a grassroots atmosphere.

“It’s always nice to have a good balance of high quality basketball mixed with a great cause,”Morak said. “I think what I take away as being most proud of is that those [NBA] guys look forward to coming back and they look forward to celebrating the time with the city, friends, family.

“I think as we’ve moved on, guys understand what they’re out there for and they understand the cause.”

With the tournament already attracting standing room only crowds for many of its games, Morak expressed a desire to grow the event to the point that it features top talent from around the region, not just Philadelphia. He wants players from other cities to get a chance to experience the unique basketball environment that the city provides.

Players can come from far and wide, but as Marcus Morris, Markieff’s twin brother who has also forged a successful NBA career, sees it, they’ll all be gunning for second place.

“You can’t mess with F.O.E,” Marcus said. “South Philly, North Philly, wherever. The whole South Philly, we took them on. It’s not possible to beat F.O.E.”


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