Every Chicago Public League gymnasium contains idiosyncrasies of design and utility, and Uplift Community High School in Uptown is no exception. The most exciting high school basketball game of the year plays out here on January 16. The players, coaches, and the scorer’s table are under crepuscular lighting and jammed against a concrete wall on the south side with just a narrow band separating them from the court.
The Uplift Titans are playing the Whitney Young Dolphins, a nationally ranked program. The Dolphins have won four state championships and have had two prominent former players, Quentin Richardson and Jahlil Okafor, reach the NBA. Young features junior guard DJ Stewart, a wiry and electric athlete who is also a highly coveted college prospect. (He would finish the game with 33 points.) Uplift is the insurgent program, with an enrollment about one-tenth the size of Young’s.
The game is a prelude to a momentous couple of days for Jacobs. On Friday, January 18, he scored a new career-best 47 points and added six rebounds and five assists as Uplift defeated Prosser. This would be his final high school game. The following day, Jacobs slipped awkwardly in a private training session and heard a small pop in his right knee.
“When it is your child, you try not to be biased, and you try to look at it with a regular eye,” says Marcus Jacobs, Markese’s father. “Since birth he has always been an energetic and fearless kid. He always stayed that way, as if he never got the memo that he should grow out of that.”
Basketball, he learned, amplified his talent, his explosiveness and athleticism, his relentless drive and competitiveness. Because of the scarcity of players on the court at a given time, a great player like a Michael Jordan or LeBron James disproportionately changes the game and potential of a college program or professional franchise. The spontaneity and free flow of basketball allows for a great deal of creativity and personal investment. Jacobs formed an intimate bond with the players, the court, and the spectators.
“He was perfect,” Coach Taylor says. “He had a genuine excitement about what was happening.” Playing with the prominent south-side-based club program Mac Irvin Fire, Jacobs traveled the national club circuit in the spring and summer of 2016, during the school’s offseason. His outstanding talent drew the attention of some of the top college coaches in the country.
