Markieff and Marcus Morris are close. So close the identical twins — who play for the Washington Wizards and Boston Celtics, respectively — have gotten kicked out of games on the same night in different arenas. Last autumn, when Markieff and his girlfriend had a baby girl, the first public photo of Jyzelle’s arrival showed Marcus carefully holding the newborn. And among the twin tapestry of tattoos they share is the Morris motto: F.O.E., which means “family over everything.”
“That’s just how we were brought up. Family always first,” Markieff Morris said December 2016. “Keep the family close.”
Because of this bond, the brothers are rooting against a Celtics-Wizards first-round playoff matchup. Their teams will meet Wednesday, and if the Wizards win, they’ll still have a chance to grab the seventh seed to meet the Celtics, who have clinched the second-best record in the East. On Monday, however, Markieff sighed before responding to the possibility of matching up against Marcus in the playoffs.
“If it was my choice, I would say no,” Markieff said, “but at the end of the day, man, you can’t pick and choose who we want to play. So it is what it is.”
[ What happened to the once-surging Wizards? Scott Brooks is set on solving it before playoffs. ]
Markieff echoed his brother’s honesty from last week. Marcus told Boston reporters that he would prefer the Celtics avoided the Wizards — for one reason.
“I don’t want to play them first because it’s my brother, and we’re going to war,” Marcus said, according to ESPN.com. “When I go out there — I’ve been telling [my teammates], this is wartime. It’s like fighting for your life out here, and I’d hate to see my brother in the first round, to have to be that bully to my brother when I know it’s going to be like.”
The brothers shared a womb. They shared a bed. They even shared the tub while growing up. It’s hard to bully the person you know so intimately, Markieff said.
Other NBA twins have played against each other — Brook and Robin Lopez, Horace and Harvey Grant, Jason and Jarron Collins for instance. However, Markieff does not understand how siblings can play rough against one another. When Morris heard the suggestion that if a playoff series happens, then one brother should commit a hard foul against the other early in Game 1 and get the awkwardness out of the way, he bristled.
“Hell nah! I ain’t fouling my brother hard!” Markieff said.
[ Wizards grapple with what they’ve become: ‘The team we were watching on film wasn’t us’ ]
Then, he explained the depth of the their connection.
“I never really got that. Like, why would you go harder at somebody that you — for me and my brother, we grew together,” Markieff said. “We took showers together, slept in the same bed. Spend 18 years of your life with — for us 21 years before we got to the NBA. Why would you even? On the outside, I would’ve cut [an opponent’s] neck off but for my brother, nah. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t even understand that.
“But nah man, it’s exciting,” Markieff continued, “that we’re even in this position to match up in the playoffs. Something that we look forward to our entire lives. It’s exciting for both of us.”
Last Friday night, in Washington, Markieff argued with an official, earning two technical fouls and an automatic ejection before eight minutes had expired in the opening quarter. Later that night, in Boston, Marcus got thrown out for shoving Chicago Bulls forward Bobby Portis with 1:44 remaining in the third quarter. The dual ejections might not have been twin telepathy. Instead, Markieff has a theory.
“I think the refs seen me get ejected in my game and said, ‘We’re going to eject his brother.’ That’s what I think,” Markieff said with a straight face. “It played out just like that.”
The NBA fined Markieff $15,000 for “directing inappropriate comments toward a game official” and he expressed remorse — but only so much.
“I said a couple words, man. Obviously I got fined for it. I said a couple words that I would want to take back,” Markieff said. “Caught up in the emotions of the game, even though it was early and you know they got a quick trigger this year so I just had to take it.”
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