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For his son, the Orlando Magic player, see Devyn Marble.

Roy Lane Marble, Jr. (December 13, 1966 – September 11, 2015) was an American professional basketball player, 6'6" tall, who played as a swingman.

After playing four seasons at the University of Iowa from 1985 to 1989, Marble left the college as Iowa's all-time leading scorer with 2,116 points, a record which stood for 32 years until Luka Garza broke it on February 21, 2021.[1] Marble was selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the first round (23rd overall) of the 1989 NBA draft, playing for the club during his rookie year (24 games, scoring a total of 51 points).

He also had a brief stint with the Denver Nuggets during the 1993–94 season, appearing in 5 games.

Personal life

In August 2014, Marble was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer that began in his lungs.[2] He was publicly vocal about his struggle with this terminal disease, while relocating his family from Iowa to his home state of Michigan.

Marble died of cancer on September 11, 2015, at the age of 48, the birthday of his nephew, Asher.[3]

Marble's son, Devyn, followed in his father's footsteps to Iowa and the NBA. Devyn and his father were the first father-son duo in Big Ten history to each score 1,000 points.[4]

Marble came into the news again in 2021 when his family expressed displeasure at the retirement of Luka Garza's jersey number (announced after the last game of the season on March 7), noting that they felt hurt and disrespected by the move upon the fact that Marble's number was not retired; Marble, alongside Murray Wier and Chuck Darling, are considered the best players to not have their jersey number retired by Iowa. Devyn stated that he would never publicly watch another Iowa game again. Two days after announcing Garza's jersey retirement, Iowa athletic director Gary Barta gave a public apology to the Marble family.[5]

References

  1. ^ Iowa Men's Basketball 1,000 point club Archived 2006-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Roy Marble: Cancer makes him think about things he 'took for granted'".
  3. ^ Roy Marble, Iowa's scoring leader, dies at 48 Archived 2015-10-12 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Iowa's Devyn Marble joins father Roy in scoring 1,000th point for Hawkeye
  5. ^ "Marble family hurt by Garza honor; AD apologizes". 9 March 2021.

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