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Marcus Washington III

Marcus Levi Washington III was a Black American professional basketball player, recreation-center volunteer, husband, and father from West Baltimore. During his senior year at West Baltimore High School, he played shooting guard and wore number twenty-three before receiving a full athletic scholarship to the University of Maryland. He completed a kinesiology degree in 2019, married Keisha Clark Washington that spring, and began his professional career with the Washington Wizards. His mother, Diana Rochelle Washington, taught him basketball before her death in 2010, and his grandparents became his primary caregivers within the family’s shared home.

Marcus’s middle name honored Diana’s brother, Levi Russell. Diana chose Levi as her contribution to the inherited Marcus Washington name.

Marcus never met Levi, but he grew up with his uncle’s photographs, the backyard garden created around Levi’s love of flowers and butterflies, and the physical resemblance carried through the Russell side of the family. Butterflies, orange flowers, and work in the garden kept Levi present in Marcus’s family life.

Early Life and Family

Marcus was born on January 21, 1997, to Marcus Levi Washington II and Diana. He was their only child and grew up with his parents and paternal grandparents in the Washington Family Home. The home had housed all three generations since before his birth.

Diana introduced Marcus to basketball and began coaching him in the driveway. He started organized basketball at eight. She taught him to think like a point guard while playing shooting guard: to watch the entire court, anticipate what would open, and avoid focusing only on the player he was guarding. Marcus wore number twenty-three in her honor throughout high school.

Diana died of triple-negative breast cancer in 2010, when Marcus was thirteen. His father’s grief and alcohol use impaired his ability to parent consistently, so Denise Washington and Marcus Washington I assumed most of Marcus’s daily care without anyone leaving the multigenerational home.

Before Diana’s death, Marcus II was quiet but reliably present. Afterward, he worked warehouse double shifts, drank Jameson, and attended many of his son’s games from the back rows. Marcus understood that his father’s distance came from grief rather than indifference, but the understanding did not remove the hurt or his wish to have his father nearer.

Education and Basketball

Marcus attended West Baltimore High School, where he played varsity shooting guard. He had worked toward college recruitment for approximately three years and was a late-blooming recruit rather than an early national prospect.

During a December 2014 game, University of Maryland assistant coach Greg Holloway evaluated Marcus. West Baltimore won by twenty-seven points. Holloway focused on Marcus’s fourth-quarter stepback three-pointer and the point-guard-like court vision Diana had taught him, then invited him for a campus visit.

Main article: UMD Scout Game (December 2014) - Event

Marcus’s January 2015 visit to College Park was the first time he had set foot on a college campus. He toured the academic-support program, position-specific strength and conditioning, medical and rehabilitation facilities, sports-psychology resources, and the Xfinity Center. During a three-on-three scrimmage, he made the stepback Holloway had seen, had two attempts blocked, then adjusted with a pump fake and left-handed finish. Coaches and players valued the speed of the adjustment. Holloway also noted Marcus’s early arrivals, late departures, and work with younger players.

Marcus’s hands began shaking after the scrimmage ended. Keisha drove his truck back to Baltimore because he was too shaken to drive safely, and Marcus slept in the passenger seat.

Main article: UMD Campus Visit (January 2015) - Event

University of Maryland coaches offered Marcus a full athletic scholarship during a March 2015 visit to the Washington home. The scholarship covered tuition, room and board, fees, books, and the new cost-of-attendance stipend available in the 2015–2016 academic year. Marcus verbally accepted and later signed his National Letter of Intent at West Baltimore High School during the regular April–May signing period.

Marcus chose kinesiology through the School of Public Health. The subject connected athletic performance with years of watching cancer change his mother’s body. Diana’s insistence that a degree mattered beyond whatever basketball made possible remained central to his decision.

Main article: UMD Home Visit (Late March 2015) - Event

Main article: Marcus Washington III (Career and Legacy)

Marcus enrolled at Maryland in fall 2015 and lived in North Campus athlete housing. His student-athlete routine included early-morning weight training, afternoon practice, evening study hall, and academic support for the combined demands of Division I basketball and college coursework. He completed a B.S. in Kinesiology in spring 2019.

He was the first member of his immediate family to attend college. The scholarship gave him access to an education his family had insisted upon while Maryland also benefited from his athletic labor.

The Washington Wizards selected Marcus in the 2019 NBA Draft, keeping him near his Baltimore family and community. He began his rookie season that fall. When the NBA suspended play in March 2020, Marcus returned home during Keisha’s pregnancy and was present for their daughter Rochelle’s birth later that year.

Physical Characteristics

By his senior year of high school, Marcus was six feet four inches tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, with a long frame and arms that filled the sleeves of his jersey. His height came through the Washington side of his family, while his breadth, large hands and feet, and overall frame resembled the Russell family. His coordination, court awareness, and fluid movement echoed Diana.

He had dark-brown skin like his father, an expressive strong jaw, a broad nose, a full mouth, and a few old acne scars along his jawline. His warm brown eyes crinkled into half-moons when he smiled. His all-teeth grin and full-bodied laugh strongly resembled Diana’s. The family described him as having “Diana’s face on Marcus’s body.”

Marcus wore his dark, coarse hair in maintained 360 waves. He brushed it regularly and wrapped it in a durag at night and sometimes during the day. His hands were large, long-fingered, and callused from basketball and weight training. He could palm a basketball easily and often kept his hands occupied by spinning a ball, drumming on a surface, or handling his phone.

His usual clothes were basketball shorts, hoodies, Nike or Jordan athletic wear, his West Baltimore High letterman jacket, and a simple gold chain. He wore expensive cologne too heavily. Beneath it, his familiar scents were clean sweat, rubber, locker-room soap, laundry, and the cooking and domestic smells of the Washington home.

Relationship to His Body

Marcus’s athletic build was functional rather than cultivated for display. On the court, his size did not make him heavy or slow; he moved with the coordination and whole-body control Diana had taught him. His mother’s long-armed, enclosing hugs remained a physical memory of being completely held.

Before his eighteenth birthday, Marcus planned to have Diana Rochelle’s name tattooed on his skin, still deciding whether to include dates. The intended tattoo would make her presence permanent in a way the shoebox of her keepsakes could not.

His hands sometimes shook after extreme emotional strain, including the end of the UMD scrimmage and the scholarship home visit. The tremor was a stress response rather than a clinical condition. He remained physically controlled during competition and experienced the shaking after the demand ended.

Personality and Communication

Marcus was loud, warm, expressive, and quick to joke. He talked constantly, teased people he cared about, and filled rooms easily. His humor was affectionate, and he usually initiated plans and conversations rather than waiting for someone else to move first.

He was perceptive about changes in other people and quick to respond when someone became quiet or stopped performing okayness. That attention made him an effective mentor to younger children. It did not make him equally comfortable discussing his own fear, grief, or romantic feelings.

Marcus processed grief through noise, movement, basketball, and action. Silence could leave him alone with memories of his mother, so he often filled it. When worry or grief broke through his usual energy, his voice dropped, the jokes stopped, and his attention narrowed. People close to him recognized his silence as a sign that something was wrong.

His dream of playing professionally frightened him because naming it made it feel vulnerable to loss. He had watched his mother die and his father collapse after building a life around her. He wanted a future in basketball while knowing that talent, health, and opportunity could disappear.

Marcus carried persistent guilt over watching Shanice diminish Keisha for approximately two years and dismissing the behavior as ordinary recreation-center drama. He later acknowledged that failure and apologized. His protectiveness grew from the determination to pay attention and show up rather than control Keisha’s choices or claim responsibility for fixing her.

In text messages, Marcus generally used lowercase, minimal punctuation, and direct phrasing. He texted first, proposed plans, and created momentum. His voice in person was bright, carrying, and mid-range in ordinary conversation; during serious moments it dropped lower and quieter, approaching his father’s register.

Habits, Preferences, and Personal Effects

Basketball organized Marcus’s days through practice, games, lifting, and later collegiate and professional schedules. He also maintained ordinary routines with Keisha. Their recurring Saturday exchange began with his you up?, her obviously., and his truck reaching her driveway by approximately 10:30. At the Charles Street diner, Marcus regularly ordered chocolate-chip pancakes.

Marcus snored gently and was extremely difficult to wake once asleep. Falling asleep at Keisha’s home became a marker of trust because he allowed himself to become unguarded there.

Marcus and Keisha also made a diner-meal bet about how long it would take Devon Morgan and Kelsey Morrison to recognize their feelings for one another. Marcus chose six weeks, Keisha chose four, and the winner chose the diner while the loser paid without separate checks.

Marcus kept Diana’s belongings in a worn basketball-shoe box from a pair he had outgrown three years earlier. He repeatedly intended to replace it with a formal keepsake box but continued using the shoebox because it had become hers. It held her silver Pandora bracelet; simple gold wedding band; handwritten macaroni-and-cheese recipe; photographs; birthday cards; final hospital-admission bracelet; and the program from the last game she attended. The box retained traces of her floral perfume.

The bracelet’s basketball, heart, cross, and book charms reflected Diana’s family, faith, interests, and insistence on education. Marcus held it when he needed physical contact with her memory.

Volunteer Work

Marcus volunteered at the West Baltimore Recreation Center for approximately two years before the summer 2014 crisis. He helped with children’s art projects and basketball activities.

Marcus worked alongside Keisha Clark, Devon Morgan, and other young volunteers. He witnessed portions of Shanice’s mistreatment of Keisha and did not intervene consistently. He later acknowledged that failure as his relationship with Keisha deepened.

During the Summer 2014 MJ Assault Crisis, Marcus joined the volunteers supporting changes in how the center treated MJ Henderson and other children.

Marcus knew the children he worked with and tried to include those who were quieter or more easily overlooked. He later coached Isaiah “Zay” Clark in the Washington driveway. Approximately three weeks before his June 2015 graduation, Marcus bought a regulation hoop and chalked a fifteen-foot free-throw line for Isaiah, leaving usable basketball infrastructure at the house before moving to college.

Family and Core Relationships

Diana Rochelle Washington

Main article: Diana Washington and Marcus Washington III

Diana introduced Marcus to basketball, coached him, and attended his organized games from the third row at center court until illness made attendance impossible. Marcus continued wearing her number after her death.

She insisted that basketball opportunities include an education, telling him, “Basketball opens the door, baby. The degree is what keeps it open. I don’t care if you play for the NBA or the YMCA—you’re getting an education. That’s not negotiable.” He remembered her instruction during his University of Maryland visit.

Marcus continued talking to Diana aloud in his room, truck, and at her grave. He wrote to her and talked internally throughout his days, hearing her coaching, arguing with her advice, and telling her about his choices, basketball, his father, and Keisha. In Marcus’s continuing relationship with her, Diana answered through the familiar voice and guidance he still experienced.

Diana sent Keisha to Marcus and guided her into Diana’s former seat at the scout game even though neither young person understood what was happening. Marcus felt his mother’s presence without knowing the intervention behind it. Denise recognized the seating as providential. Marcus’s own practice of including quieter children at the recreation center continued Diana’s instinct for making people feel seen.

Holding Diana’s bracelet recalled her reassurance, “Stop borrowing tomorrow’s problems, baby. You got enough today.”

Marcus Washington II

Main article: Marcus Washington II and Marcus Washington III

Marcus knew that his father continued attending games even when he remained in the back rows. At the December 2014 scout game, Marcus II arrived shortly after play began, sat three rows closer than usual, remained through the final buzzer, and left his flask untouched. Marcus reacted with visible joy when he saw him.

Before the March 2015 home visit, Marcus II placed a trembling hand on his son’s shoulder and reassured him that he was enough. During the meeting, he stood beside Marcus and credited Diana with building their son’s game. Marcus’s hands shook afterward in the same fine pattern he recognized from his father. Over the following years, Marcus II entered recovery and became a more present father and grandfather.

Denise Washington and Marcus Washington I

Main article: Denise Washington and Marcus Washington III

Denise and Pop had lived with Marcus since birth. Pop was present for bottles, first steps, and Diana’s driveway lessons. After Diana’s death, his grandparents provided the consistent parenting his father could not manage without shaming Marcus II for his grief or alcohol use. Both attended Marcus’s games and school events, with Denise cheering loudly and Pop offering quieter support at increasing physical and sensory cost.

Marcus understood Pop’s grunt as greeting, nod as approval, lowered newspaper as attention, and standing as pride. He did not fully recognize what Pop’s attendance cost until his June 2015 graduation. That night, he found Pop asleep in the brown recliner with his crossword pencil in hand, his glasses crooked, his knuckles swollen, and his knees stiff. Marcus covered Pop with the green-and-brown afghan, tucked it around his knees, and slept on the couch listening to him breathe.

Romantic and Significant Relationships

Keisha Clark

Main article: Marcus Washington III and Keisha Clark

Marcus and Keisha volunteered together for approximately two years before beginning a romantic relationship in early December 2014. Their transition began with a Saturday group dinner, followed by brunch at a Charles Street diner the next morning. In Marcus’s truck afterward, Keisha disclosed the full extent of Shanice’s abuse. Marcus refused to let her minimize it, then clarified his anger when she flinched and held her while she cried. Their first kiss was awkward: Marcus apologized and pulled back, and Keisha actively pulled him toward her again.

When Shanice later attacked Keisha through Facebook, Marcus processed his anger by talking to Diana and then went to Keisha to stay with her rather than trying to take control of the response. Mila Clark recognized that his guilt was genuine and that his protectiveness followed Keisha’s needs. She came to treat him as a fixture in Keisha’s life. Isaiah assessed Marcus separately through time together in the driveway, and their relationship developed into mentorship.

Keisha attended the scout game one week later in a purple coat and unknowingly sat in Diana’s former seat between Denise and Pop. During the forty-three-minute drive to the January campus visit, Marcus held the steering wheel at ten and two while tension remained in his jaw. Keisha told him, “You can be terrified and ready. Those aren’t opposites.” They took separate academic tours. After his hands began shaking, she drove his truck home.

At the March home visit, Keisha brought color-coded kinesiology research and kept a knee touching Marcus’s beneath the table. Marcus made sure the coaches understood that her academic plans were independent of his recruitment. After his father spoke, Marcus texted my dad is at the table; Keisha answered i know.

Marcus and Keisha completed their undergraduate degrees in spring 2019 and married after graduation and before the NBA draft. Keisha began a Counseling Psychology doctoral program that fall and later completed it while she and Marcus raised their daughter. Rochelle Washington was born in 2020 and named for Diana’s mother, Rochelle Russell, continuing the family’s memorial naming sequence. The family later lived in the Washington metropolitan area while maintaining close ties to the West Baltimore home.

Memorable Quotes

“Keish. You gotta give me something. I’m out here having a heart attack.” (Marcus responding when Keisha began crying after the scout game.)

“I’m not being nice. I’m being accurate.” (Marcus responding when Keisha deflected his praise of her counseling ambitions.)

“Keisha Clark at the University of Maryland studying to be a counselor who helps teenage girls survive the Shanices of the world. That’s the most serious thing in this entire diner.” (Marcus affirming Keisha’s academic goal during their Charles Street brunch.)

“It’s you too, Dad. You showed up. Every game. Even when you—even in the back. You were there. I knew you were there.” (Marcus speaking to his father after the scholarship offer.)

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