City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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The annual Rumph Classic isn’t just a high-level offseason hoops tournament for a great cause, it’s also an annual congregation of many of the city’s best current professional ballplayers. And, over the years, it’s slowly turned into a showcase of quite a few players who were once featured as high schoolers on this very site anywhere from five years to more than a decade ago. 

We didn’t have time to write up a feature story on all of them — so instead, I caught up with quite a few over the course of the Rumph weekend to get a quick update on where their careers have taken them, what’s coming up next, and their favorite memory from their high school years.

Here’s the first part of that coverage:

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Josh Sharkey (2016 | Archbishop Carroll)

For Sharkey, the 2025 Rumph Classic represents a return — not just a return to Philly, but a return to the court. The former Carroll standout, who played four years of D-I ball at Samford (2016-20), suffered the first major injury of his playing career last May, when he tore his Achilles going for a rebound in a pickup game. 

He said the physical side of the recovery was “easy,” but missing out on a whole season of hoops for the first time was not.

“It didn’t hit me until the season started in September, I’m seeing all my peers play and go to whatever countries they were playing in,” he said. “You’ve got to have good solid people around you, because without them I wouldn’t have made it. They helped me stay motivated and stay strong mentally.”

Sharkey was back in his happy place on the court with LOE, reuniting with lifelong friends Tony Carr and Lamar Stevens at Daskalakis Athletic Center. The three have played in various high-level hoops leagues since their respective collegiate graduations; Sharkey’s own career has taken the 5-foot-10 guard to Germany, Poland, Turkey, Sweden and Romania, as well as a little bit of time in the G-League. He’s still looking for a team next year, but said that he’s had multiple teams reach out coming off his injury and was confident he would sign somewhere soon.

Highlights of his overseas experience, Sharkey said, included his time in Warsaw, Poland, and the baklava in Turkey. 

As for his favorite high school memory: “Probably beating Roman [Catholic] at Girard College [in the regular season]. Just because we hadn’t beaten them the whole time, and to do it my senior year, with that group of guys, it was great. And we were underdogs the whole season, nobody thought we were going to be good and we were one of the top three teams in the Catholic League that year. “

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Quade Green (2017 | Neumann-Goretti)

Once the upstart youngster making waves around the city as a freshman at Neumann-Goretti — and beyond — Green is now giving back to the next generation. The former Kentucky and University of Washington standout, a McDonald’s All-American after a standout career with the Saints, has played in Mexico, Venezuela, the UK and in the G-League his career thus far, and he’s enjoyed putting on camps and clinics in the various places he’s played.

“Around the country, teaching little kids the game and everything, being a product of my environment, giving back to the kids that came up under me, that’s all,” he said. “[I learned] you don’t know everything as a basketball player, even touching the highest level, you don’t know everything. I still work out with the little kids too, they work out with me, too, they teach me a lot of things.”

A 6-foot-tall guard and five-star recruit in high school, Green split his college years evenly between his two schools, averaging 9.0 ppg and 2.6 apg in two years at UK and then 14.0 ppg and 4.2 apg in two years at UW. Now playing in his fourth Rumph Classic, he’s quickly becoming one of the veteran presences around the city, and that’s a mantle he’s happy to help hold. 

Playing at Rumph and putting on for the city, with a number of the area’s current high school stars watching from the stands on Thursday night, was clearly important to him, and for his generation of guards.

“Me, Sharkey, Sam Sessoms, Fatts Russell, Collin [Gillepie], Tone Carr, a lot of great guards in our class, in our environment, really,” he said. “We’re all just continuing to teach the young kids, that’s all we do right now.”

And his favorite high school memory: “Just being a winner, really,” he said. “Having more wins than losses on my record. Being a McDonald’s All-American, coming from Neumann-Goretti, I can’t be mad about none of that.”

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Xzavier Malone-Key (2016 | Plymouth Whitemarsh)

It wasn’t tough for Malone-Key to recall his favorite high school basketball memory. Scoring 29 points in a District 1 championship win and capping it off with a pair of dunks tends to have that effect.

“It was in front of all my family and friends, and I ended the game with two dunks in a row, it was crazy,” he said of that 2016 title, a 68-57 win over Chester. “Everything you could dream of as a kid.”

Nearly 10 years later, after collegiate stops at Rider, Fairleigh Dickinson and Oregon State — finding the most success at FDU, averaging 11.8 ppg in two years — Malone-Key is at a little bit of a crossroads in his career. He spent the last year as a graduate manager with the Saint Joseph’s men, unsure if he wants to try finding a team to sign with in 2025-26 or call it a wraps on his professional career and figure out what’s next. 

One thing he said for sure was that eventually he wanted to do “anything that’s got to do with serving and giving the game back,” citing a stronger belief system post-college that’s helped ground him. 

“Honestly, my faith in God has grown immensely,” he said. “As you get older, you go through different things in life — trauma, experiences, different things like that, and it just makes you grow up as a man. My faith has just grown immensely and I’ve found myself outside of basketball. I always tell people, find yourself outside of basketball as well because you never know what may happen, it ain’t forever.”

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Clifton Moore (2017 | Hatboro-Horsham)

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Moore teamed up with a familiar face. 

The 6-11 Hatboro-Horsham alum, who played part of his college career at La Salle (2020-22) along with stops at Indiana (2017-19) and Providence (2022-21), played last season with Stade Rochelais in France’s top-level Pro A league, where amongst his teammates was Shipley product and Philly standout Sam Sessoms. He liked it so much he’s returning to France this upcoming year, signing with Saint Quentin to return to the Pro A for his third overall season as a professional.

Once a lanky raw wing brimming with upside at Hatboro, he’s now a filled out, muscular, mobile big man who understands what it takes to physically compete at the professional level. 

“It’s a different game over there, so you just live and adapt,” he said. “It’s been a good experience for me, seeing the world, and everything it has to offer, for sure.”

Moore averaged 8.4 ppg and 3.3 rpg last year for La Rochelle, which finished in last place in the Pro A in its first season in the top league in France, one of the best in all of Europe. Saint Quentin finished in 10th place last season (13-17), near the midpoint of the 16-team league. 

The 2025 Rumph Classic was Moore’s second in the charity tournament, as he teamed up with a number of former local standouts like Justin Jaworski (Perk Valley) and Erik Timko (Methacton), along with NBA wing Tyrese Martin. 

“My dad comes every year,” he said. “Now that I’m a pro, to have him see me, have my family see me, represent Philly, it’s a good opportunity for sure.”

As for his favorite high school moment, Moore said it was playing in the Kobe Bryant Classic at Lower Merion his senior year, when he scored 26 points in a win over the Sanford School (Del.). 

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Quadir Welton (2013 | Math, Civics & Sciences)

Welton’s hoops journey has taken him all over the world, from Serbia to Argentina and a few stops in between. This past year, the former Math, Civics & Sciences big man stayed closer to home, playing for the New York Phoenix in The Basketball League, a seven-year-old association of 32 teams playing all over the country. 

The Phoenix, based in Schenectady (N.Y.), just north of NYC, were playing their first year in the league. Welton had plenty of locals on the roster in fellow Philly hoopers Wali Hepburn, Mustapha Traore and Isaiah Wilmore, earning full-time salaries playing hoops with paid-for accommodations like an overseas contract. He plans on playing for them again this season.

“It’s a nice situation,” Welton said. “They pay pretty good, they give us a place to stay, our gym is two minutes away, we’ve got an NBA court.”

More of a traditional, back-to-the-basket big man while at MCS and then with Saint Peter’s, where he started 126 out of 131 career appearances and finished with 1,191 points and 884 rebounds, Welton’s used his eight seasons as a professional to expand his game, putting the ball on the floor with ease in the open court at the DAC and slicing to the hoop like a guard on several occasions. 

“I slimmed down a lot [since high school], worked on my handle a little bit more, still got the post game, and just passing, too,” he said. “Getting others involved. So really just attacking, playing my game and staying active.”

Welton said his favorite basketball memory from high school was playing with Philly Pride his 17U summer (2012) up at a tournament in Milwaukee:  “That was probably the (most fun) one for me. Just seeing Brandon Jennings, you saw a lot of dudes who went to the NBA like the Harrison twins and all that stuff, it was a big tournament.”

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Robert Smith (2020 | Bishop McDevitt)

One of the locals making his Rumph Classic debut was Smith, who just wrapped up a strong college career between West Chester and Delaware State and is now getting ready to head overseas. The former Bishop McDevitt star — the youngest player in the area able to say so, as his 2020 graduating class was the school’s final one — hasn’t signed yet with a professional team, but he said it’s just a matter of waiting for his passport to arrive. 

In the meanwhile, Smith is taking advantage of the Rumph atmosphere to talk to all sorts of current and former overseas pros about what’s in store in the near future.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of pros, like Sam Sessoms, he’s one of my closest friends, one of my mentors, I want to be where he’s at,” Smith said. “I always talk to him about what’s going on, how the overseas stuff is. Everything’s new, new countries, new people, new language, you’ve got a lot of stuff that you’ve got to learn up there.”

Smith was a standout at WCU for three years and then transferred to Delaware State to prove himself at the D-I level, which he certainly did. The 6-0 left-hander nicknamed ‘Man-Man’ averaged 18.0 ppg, 3.0 rpg and 2.9 apg on .430/.364/.753 splits, a 34-point outburst against Morgan State his high-water mark on the season. The Rumph Classic might have provided a small motivation as he scored more than 1,850 collegiate points.

“I saw Tyrese Maxey play when he was here, so that kind of inspired me,” he said. “If I kill in college, they’ve got to put me in this game.”

Smith couldn’t pick one favorite high school moment: “I would say when I made it to the Palestra my junior year at McDevitt, or when I hit my 1,000 points.”

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