Few athletes have scrapped to get where they are as Wallace did. The 10th of 11 children growing up in tiny White Hall, Ala., he and his brothers picked pecans and bailed hay to earn money to buy a basketball hoop. “My mother went through a lot with us — just a lot of trials, tribulations and failures — and we didn’t have a lot of anything besides love,” he said. “So, when it came my time to do something, she refused to let me fail. She didn’t want me to fall into the trail that our family followed to stay in Alabama.”
Ben Wallace Rumors
All NBA Players
#0
Ben Wallace
Position: -
Born: 09/10/74
Height: 6-9 / 2.06
Weight:240 lbs. / 108.9 kg.
Earnings: $87,800,795 ($114,173,907*)
Born: 09/10/74
Height: 6-9 / 2.06
Weight:240 lbs. / 108.9 kg.
Earnings: $87,800,795 ($114,173,907*)
Metta World Peace: I looked at some videos . I got @Money23Green top 5 greatest defenders of all time . Mainly because he was smaller than my brother Ben Wallace and has more championships while playing the center position.
Ben Wallace on winning the NBA title against the Lakers: “Going into the Finals against Kobe and Shaq, no one was giving us a chance and wrote us off. It was kind of funny, it was like, ‘For real?’ I had some great teammates and brothers in Rasheed (Wallace), Chauncey (Billups), Rip (Hamilton), Lindsey (Hunter) and all the other guys. I think the way I played defense, it rubbed off on them. We knew that the only way they could beat us was if we gave them open looks, warmup shots. We knew Shaq and Kobe were going to be the focal points but they didn’t see focal points with us because we were a bonafide team. We just ran up and down the floor and wore them down, man. We had the utmost confidence in each other and we had a great bench that played just as focused and just as hard. That was always our key. We came at you in waves. I’ll take our team any day, any time.”
Ben Wallace on his fight with Ron Artest that precipitated ‘the Malice at the Palace’: “The Pacers were beating us pretty good and it was near the end of the game when Artest drove to the basket for a layup and I blocked the shot. I overheard him tell the official that he missed the call and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get him back.’ I grew up that when someone said they’re going to get you, then it’s on, you have to be prepared to handle your business. I then went for a layup and he fouled me hard and was trying to pay me back. I reacted and pushed him and the arena was pretty charged. When that fan threw a drink on Ron, it was very disrespectful, and then things really got of hand when he went into the stands after that guy. Things happen so fast and you just react. You never want to see things spill into the stands and have your fans get involved.”
Ben Wallace: “We all took our punishment and fortunately, no one got seriously hurt. But I always admired the way Ron Artest played the game and the energy he played with on the defensive end. There was no real beef between us, it was just something that happened.”
Draymond Green, a Saginaw, Mich. native, was asked by NBC Sports Bay Area’s Kerith Burke about former Detroit Pistons star Ben Wallace being among the finalists for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and discussed his own aspirations for one day being enshrined. “I still gotta keep building, I’m not done yet, so I got some years left to try and do some more things and hopefully add on to that resume,” Green told reporters Friday. “But I really wanna make the Hall of Fame, that’s for sure, obviously that’s one of the greatest honors in our sport, I mean any sport, to make the Hall of Fame.”
NBA announces 2021 Hall of Fame finalists, headlined by Chris Bosh, Chris Webber, Paul Pierce and Tim Hardaway
Jonathan Feigen: Should be a strong class if voters get it right. Chris Webber and Chris Bosh return as finalists along with Paul Pierce, Tim Hardaway, Marques Johnson, Lauren Jackson, Ben Wallace, Marianne Stanley, Yolanda Griffith, Jay Wright, Michael Cooper and Bill Russell (as coach.)
