Small town teenager
Before becoming a player on hardwood floors, Ben Wallace's most common job was to do farm work in the sweltering cotton fields of Alabama. He was born and raised in Whitehall, a town in Langtz County, Alabama's ninth-poorest county, with a population of less than 750 people and a 37 percent poverty rate.
Not to mention that wallace's family had eleven children, and he was the tenth.
"I've been through a lot of things growing up. The most common thing I do is work on a cotton plantation, and this experience has benefited me a lot in my life. "Ben. Wallace said, "It's hard for me to imagine that my life has not taken a detour, and to get to this point, we must have a strong focus." ”
Big Ben still remembers the day he set the direction of his life: his eldest brother James. When McBride walked into the house with a bunch of basketball sports suits he had bought from a second-hand store, he was sitting on the couch watching TV.
With the words "Eastern Exchange" printed on the chest and the names of other people on the back of the jerseys, McBride told his brothers that he was going to form a basketball team and participate in community-organized games.
Ben wasn't really interested in basketball at the time, but he also wanted a jersey, so he joined the brothers' team.
So the brothers told me to grab the rebound. Big Ben said. Slowly, his performance on the court became more and more important, not only becoming the best kid in the family, but also walking all the way to the Basketball Hall of Fame. It was something he couldn't have imagined growing up.
"One day, my brothers didn't want to play with me anymore," Ben said. Wallace said, "When I started training in basketball, I found that I was very good at the sport. ”
Big Ben knew what he could do on the court, but he never dreamed that he would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. "You never say on the court that you're going to be a Hall of Famer," he said, "that's the temple in my mind, the forbidden place I can't step into." ”
After a year of basketball at Central High School, Big Ben received no attention, playing for two years at Caihoga Community College in Cleveland from 1992 to 1994, averaging 17 points and 6.9 blocks per game before transferring to Virginia United, where his head coach was legendary coach Dave Robbins.
"Ben wasn't a traditional type of defender," said Robbins, the first white coach in the history of the Central Sports University Association, "and he played with his agility, and he would stand under the basket until the opponent shot." ”
Although Daben failed to lead the team to a national championship, he led his teammates to the final four of the second division, and that season, he was selected to the first team of the Central University Association and the first team of the second division league.
"Ben plays like a mature professional, he has a great basketball IQ and a strong personal style, he's like a football player, he has excellent footsteps," he said in his senior year coach Jay. Butler said, "He's one of the hardest-working players I've ever seen. ”
After the end of the senior season, Ben. Wallace anxiously awaited the appearance of his name in the 1996 draft, but he was disappointed. Subsequently, he went to Italy and tried out with Reggio Calabria.
Coach Robbins was very disappointed by The loss of Big Ben, who believed that he had the capital to establish himself in the NBA, but was only ignored by the NBA team because of his birth in the second division league.
After the start of the 1996-97 season, Big Ben was finally signed by the Washington Wizards, and the first thing he had to do before entering the NBA was to stand firm, and Big Ben played with the Wizards for three years with his unique defensive ability before being traded to the Orlando Magic.
A year later, in 2000, he was traded to the Detroit Pistons and found the best place for himself During this difficult journey, Big Ben polished his mind and clarified the road ahead.
New bad boy
"In Detroit, I had intimate relationships with some guys who could talk, and we were like brothers." "We stuck together all day, sharing our lives and thoughts on basketball, and we spent countless nights together, which is why the Pistons won the championship," Big Ben said. ”
Ben Wallace and several other teammates: Billups, Hamilton, Rashid. Wallace and Prince reinvented the glorious image of the "bad boy" in Larry. Coach Brown won the championship under his leadership.
In the 2004 Finals, Big Ben averaged 10.3 points, 14.3 rebounds and 2.4 blocks per game, and they beat the championship big hit lakers in just five games, and let a star-studded team score less than 70 points in the Finals, even in that defensive era.
"We don't have real star players, but we have five good players who know how to build a super team." Pistons guard Lindsay. Hunter's assessment of the team was rather objective, and in his mind, the leader of that Pistons team was Ben. Wallace.
The close-up and finals MVP trophy may have belonged to Changxi but Ben is definitely the soul of the team and Hunter is from Mississippi and is one and Ben. Wallace-like "Southern Boys". "We always attacked each other, a lot of people don't know, the Pistons can train ten times more intensely than the game, and after the training, we have scratches on our arms and sometimes the jerseys are torn. I remember the team in the selection of Dakota. After Milisic, how Ben ravaged him in training.
In his view, only by going all out can young people grow up quickly, because that's how he came. Chauncey. Billups also said: "Ben, Wallace's fighting spirit and courage are very much in line with the style of Detroit. ”
"Before we came to Detroit, we all had one thing in common, which was that we were all abandoned by the teams of the past," Billups said, "so when we get together, we want to prove to people that their decision was wrong." When playing with Ben, our team embodied the city spirit of Detroit.
We work hard to face hardships like the blue-collar workers in the city. He was undaunted against the best center in the league, and although he was beaten by Shaq, he never thought he would be beaten, just like our team. ”
In 2006, Ben, Wallettus signed a four-year, $60 million contract with the Chicago Bulls, and while leaving Detroit was a tough decision, his teammates expressed support.
Everyone loves to play with him, but everyone supports him to leave, looking for a better future and a higher salary, because that's what he deserves after giving everything for Detroit.
"In my career, I've gone through the process of going from losing player to championship, which I won with my teammates." Big Ben said that after his trip to Chicago, he went to Cleveland, and LeBron. James played together, "If all goes well, I probably'll never leave Detroit, but I think it's good to go elsewhere and experience it, I've reinvented myself and continue to be humble, I don't need cheers and love from people, I've proven myself." ”
Dreams come true
root. Wallace, whose relationship with Detroit is inextricably linked, retired after returning to the Pistons in 2009 and playing three seasons. After that, he experienced a period of depression because he was used to having games and once he left the stadium, he wasn't quite comfortable with a life of doing nothing.
"I was always busy before I retired, and my daily schedule was very full," Big Ben said, "After retiring, I thought I had more time to spend with my family, but when I was at home, they went to work, went to school, I felt a little lonely." ”
He decided to return to basketball, and in 2018, Big Ben became one of the shareholders of the Grand Rapids Gold team in the development league and began working as a special adviser to the Pistons.
At the same time, as the last All-Star player from a traditional black university, he also hopes to help players from traditional black universities enter the NBA. Currently, the only player from a traditionally black college who plays in the NBA is Robert Blazers. Covington, he's from Tennessee State University.
"I was the first player to lose the Hall of Fame, and that's an immutable fact, but I don't want to be the only one," Big Ben said, "and the help and development we've received can't compare to the players at those basketball schools, but I believe that traditional black colleges can produce good players."
Big Ben hopes that being inducted into the Hall of Fame will be an opportunity to awaken the attention of traditional black universities, and he also believes that three of his former teammates coaching at traditional black universities will also have a positive impact on them: they are Alabama State University Mo. Williams, Hunter of Mississippi Valley State University and Butler of Virginia Union University.
"This induction into the Hall of Fame is a huge encouragement to black players like him, which means that as long as they work hard enough, they have the opportunity to go to college and get into the NBA," Butler said. ”
As Ben Wallace prepared to give his Hall of Fame speech, he felt calm because it was the reward he deserved after seventeen years of his career.
"It's an exciting time for me and my family," Ben Wallace is 47 years old, "and I'm going to tell you something that anything is possible." We all have a talent for playing basketball, but a lot of people need more time to discover their talent. "
"If you don't give it your all, then your dreams will be difficult to achieve, and this is something that will plague you for the rest of your life." He went on to say, "I went all the way from the bottom and became the ultimate winner. Sometimes my road wasn't smooth, but I persevered. A lot of people think that being able to play against O'Neal and help the team win is the hardest moment, but I'll say that it's far more difficult than the process of me reaching that moment. ”
In May of this year, Daben was inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and in the process of attending the awards ceremony, he received a call from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He was with his wife Chanda and his three children, Ben, Bryce and Bailey, and he waited for news that he had been waiting for years.
But what pleased Ben the most was his youngest daughter, Bailey, who had a new understanding of him, and she was too young to see her father's heroism on the court. After learning the news, she found out her father's highlights of the game and wanted to reconfirm that Big Ben was not the "stadium tramp" Ben he remembered. Wallace laughs and says, "She (Bailey) is going to be in ninth grade this year, she shared a clip of my game with a friend, and she finally realized how good his father was, which is the thing that makes me happiest." 」