Greg Marius, who helped make street basketball big business when he founded a tournament in Harlem that let playground standouts share the court with professional stars in a raucous atmosphere of dazzling play, hip-hop music and exuberant crowds, died on Saturday in Harlem. He was 59.
His sister Cheryl Marius, who confirmed the death, at a hospital, said he had cancer.
Mr. Marius was a young rapper with a group called the Disco Four when he started the tournament, the Entertainers Basketball Classic, in 1982, originally involving rival hip-hop crews who played one another on Harlem courts.
Before long, he began inviting more talented players to participate, and soon the E.B.C. became a prominent basketball tournament in Harlem, held at Holcombe Rucker Park, at West 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, near the site of the old Polo Grounds.
At the time, Rucker Park was already hallowed ground to fans of street ball, a louder, flashier relative of professional basketball that emphasizes individuality, slick moves and dunks over the fundamentals.
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Named after Holcombe Rucker, who founded a tournament to keep neighborhood youths off the streets in 1946, the park became a proving ground for homegrown talent.
In the 1970s, National Basketball Association stars like Wilt Chamberlain, Connie Hawkins and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar came to challenge local talent like Joe Hammond, known as the Destroyer, and Earl Manigault, nicknamed the Goat. (For Hawkins, it was a homecoming: He had been a schoolboy legend at Rucker who many students of the game say played his best ball there in obscurity.)
But by the early 1980s, professional players were much less likely to show up at Rucker and risk injuries that could jeopardize their N.B.A. careers. That was when Mr. Marius took the lead in enticing top talent to return through aggressive promotion and corporate sponsorships, transforming Rucker Park’s pro-versus-playground history into a branding opportunity.
“I’m not going to tell you that this is a multimillion-dollar business — not yet, anyway,” Mr. Marius told The New York Times in 2002. “But we’re about to take off in that direction.”
The E.B.C. is now an elimination tournament held every summer and lasting for weeks, the basketball accentuated by a booming hip-hop soundtrack, enthusiastic play-by-play calling and thousands of roaring fans, many of whom wait hours to watch the games, which offer free admission.
Mr. Marius also took versions of the tournament on the road to other cities, broadening street ball’s audience.
N.B.A. stars like LeBron James, Shaquille O’Neal, Allen Iverson, Vince Carter and Kobe Bryant have all played in the E.B.C. So has Kevin Durant, who once scored 66 points in a game. The hip-hop musicians Sean Combs, Fat Joe, Ja Rule, Jay Z and others have sponsored teams.
The tournament has attracted corporate sponsors like Reebok, Gatorade, AT&T and Tommy Hilfiger, and games have been broadcast on NBA TV and MSG.
In the process, tiny Rucker Park has become an international symbol of basketball prowess, and tourists now flock to join the locals at E.B.C. games, many of them hoping to see celebrities along the sideline. Alicia Keys, Denzel Washington and former President Bill Clinton have been among the luminaries in the crowd.
Gregory Alexander Marius was born in Harlem on March 18, 1958. His mother, the former Elaine Smith, was a community activist; his father, Nathan, was a chemist at a hospital in Paterson, N.J.
Mr. Marius grew up in Harlem and lived there at his death. He graduated from La Salle Academy, a Roman Catholic school in the East Village in Manhattan, then attended St. John’s University in Queens.
In addition to his sister Cheryl, he is survived by another sister, Stacey Marius; a daughter, Charisma Marius; and three sons, Raheem, Gregory and Nathan.
Starting in the 1980s, running and promoting the E.B.C. was Mr. Marius’s full-time occupation. But some Harlem locals, including Mr. Hammond, the former Rucker Park star, did not welcome all the hullabaloo.
“It ain’t what Rucker built it to be,” Mr. Hammond said in 2002. “It’s a tourist attraction now, a moneymaker, and the big business is killing the basketball.”
The criticism did not faze Mr. Marius. “I’m not going to apologize for turning a street-ball game into one of the largest marketing tools in corporate America,” he said.
He added: “The people who say that we aren’t part of the Holcombe Rucker philosophy are right. But who can deny the fact that my league has kept the legacy of Holcombe Rucker alive?”
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