![]() ![]() And yet he still couldn't grab the gold ring. He transformed one of the most dismal franchises in the league - the Sacramento Kings - into the most exciting, exhilarating basketball team on the planet. During a stretch at the turn of the century, Chris Webber was the best power forward of his generation. The fascinating thing about Chris Webber is that he has never publicly come to terms with his Michigan melodrama, even while his career as an NBA player recapitulated the tropes of his essential story line with a flair that most ancient Greek tragedians would consider ludicrous overkill. But Michigan chews up young African-American athletes and spits them out by the score every single year. So spare me the moralizing about Webber's "lies." Yes, Michigan suffered tremendously from Webber's entanglement with the booster Ed Martin. Vast fortunes for schools, coaches and television networks have been built on top of their labor, and only a tiny percentage of the kids exploited for their skills ever see a serious payday. An appearance by Webber rips the scab off the wound, forces a renewed reckoning with not just the timeout, but the way Webber symbolized - or is supposed to symbolize - the corruption of college sports.īring it on! I am in the camp that believes that players are the last people who should be blamed for the consequences of what happens when money and "amateur" athletics intersect. Which may explain why, as of this writing, although the other four members of the Fab Five - Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson and Jimmy King - have made plans to be in attendance tonight in Atlanta, there hasn't been a peep from Webber, despite the entreaties of his former teammates. So from a fan's perspective, there's a lot to forgive, or continue to nurse with simmering hatred. The Michigan program went into a protracted tailspin. Webber even lost his 1993 All-American honor and was forced to "disassociate" himself from the University of Michigan for 10 years. No banners hang at Crisler Arena marking two consecutive championship games. In the aftermath of the scandal, all the games won by Webber's teams were "vacated" - in the record books, it's as if they never happened. Chris Webber, it turned out, had been taking money from a Michigan booster since middle school - a lot of money - as much as $400,000. The timeout fiasco was only the beginning of the disaster. The gods of basketball decreed: It is hubris to think you can have five freshmen take you to a championship game without paying some kind of price. Getting there twice in a row? Absolutely fantastic!īut talk about your nasty karmic paybacks. ![]() Winning a single game in the NCAA tournament is a blast. How could I not fall in love with Chris Webber's radiant smile? Those young men delivered more thrills in two seasons than most college basketball fans get from their alma mater in a lifetime. The clutch free throws of Rumeal Robinson!) The Fab Five, despised as "thugs" by so many on the national scene for their breakthrough baggy shorts and hip-hop style (Egad! They listened to NWA in the locker room!), were my team. ![]() Michigan's 1989 NCAA championship helped me get through a divorce. I graduated from the University of Michigan. Will he show up in Atlanta to see another band of Michigan kids go for the title? Can he forgive himself? Can we forgive him? If my subconscious had a reason for avoiding the video all these years - I couldn't handle the truth! - I can only imagine how hard it must be for Chris Webber, particularly on this day of all days, with Michigan finally back from the depths to which he sank the program. We've seen much more unlikely finishes during this year's tournament most notably, the incredible game-tying 30-foot three point shot against Kansas launched by Michigan's current super-sophomore Trey Burke. A potential tie or even a win was utterly within the realm of possibility. But just now, rewatching it (thanks for nothing, YouTube!), I saw that there were 11 seconds left on the clock and the Wolverines were only down two points and had the ball right next to their own basket. For all these years, I have excused Webber's horrible mistake by arguing that the game was already all-but-lost for Michigan when he choked. After the timeout, he became a national laughingstock. Before the timeout, Webber was in the conversation for greatest college basketball player of all time. I watched a replay of Chris Webber's infamous timeout at the end of the NCAA championship game against North Carolina in 1993.Įvery basketball fan knows the story: Michigan was out of timeouts, but Webber panicked, resulting in a technical foul against the Wolverines and nailing the coffin shut on the Fab Five's second straight championship game loss. Something I've avoided for 20 long years. I just did something that caused me great pain. ![]()
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