Top high school sports teams use all kinds of different traditions to forge tight bonds with one another. Some develop intricate handshakes. Many use catchy team specific chants. Others have very specific warm-up routines. And of course, some lip-synch and dance to Justin Bieber.
Wait, what?
Marcus Basketball "Baby" by kennybor24
Yes, you read that correctly. In this case, the team in question is one of the nation's top-10 ranked boys hoops squads in the RivalsHigh 100, Flower Mound (Texas) Marcus High (currently ranked number 7). Marcus, the defending state champ, has emerged as the cream of Texas' Class 5A crop, using balanced scoring from Oklahoma State signees Marcus Smart and Phil Forte Jr. and New Mexico signee Nick Banyard. Put it all together and that's a lot of firepower for one high school team.
As it turns out, that's also a lot of coordinated fake Bieber singing and dancing, as demonstrated in the video you see above, which was first dug up by the Dallas Morning News. In fact, not only does the Marcus squad loosen up by getting down with Bieber, they do it by singing along with arguably his teeny boppiest tune of all, the mega-hit "Baby."
According to the Morning News' Corbett Smith, the senior nailing the Bieber lyrics throughout the clip is guard A.J. Luckey, who clearly spent plenty of time memorizing the tune backwards and forwards. The man is dead-on, line after line.
Smart then makes a cameo appearance filling in for Atlanta rapper Ludacris' verse, albeit with less clothing than Ludacris sports in Bieber's video.
Do other teams get down with the Bieb's greatest hits? Who knows. Given Marcus' success, maybe it actually does make a difference. After all, when a team goes 25-2 through the first 27 games of the season it's definitely doing plenty right, maybe even including elaborate lip synching performances.
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