Ben Wallace: The Impossible Hall of Famer
When Grant Hill made the decision to leave the Detroit Pistons and join the Orlando Magic in the summer of 2000, it was crushing. The idea of him leaving loomed over Pistons fans for an entire season, in a time where we weren’t able to get up to the second free agency updates from Woj or Shams on Twitter.
I first heard the news on our local TV station during the 11pm news. I was staying over a friend’s house that night and I went to the bathroom and started to cry. I was 17 and Hill was my favorite player on the Pistons. My sports fan heart was broken. Growing up in Michigan, the Pistons became my favorite team and all I cared about was them getting good and winning again. With Hill, it still hadn’t happened, but without him, they were doomed.
Hill was set to join Tracy McGrady in Orlando and the two were about to take the NBA by storm. A month after the initial announcement, the deal became official. The Pistons and Magic agreed to a sign and trade so that Hill could get the most lucrative contract possible. Regardless, Hill was gone, so this got the Pistons something in return and Hill more money.
In return for Grant Hill — one of the very best players in the NBA — the Pistons got two guys named Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins. As an NBA fanatic, I knew of Wallace, but there was nothing to get excited about, he became a starter in Orlando during the 1999-00 season and averaged 5 points and 8 rebounds per game in about 24 minutes. I had no hype for getting Wallace, I figured he would probably just get in the way of Jerome Williams, who was one of my favorite players on the team. As for Atkins, I was excited to get him. As an undrafted rookie the prior season in Orlando, he made All-Rookie Second Team, averaging almost 10 points per game as a spark plug off Orlando’s bench.
Still, it didn’t matter. The Pistons lost Grant Hill, sure we didn’t lose him for nothing, but we got two guys that really didn’t matter in return.
BOY WAS I WRONG. WE ALL WERE.
Ben Wallace making it to the NBA was pretty much impossible.
Wallace went undrafted during the 1996 NBA Draft, one of the most talented crops of players ever. 58 names were called that night, all-time greats like Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Steve Nash and Ray Allen. A bevy of all-stars throughout the years as well. Of those 58 names, Wallace wasn’t one of them.
He’s now one of those all-time greats.
The Division II player out of Virginia Union University was instead brought into camp by the Boston Celtics, where their brass tried to make Wallace a shooting guard. This was his next chance at making it in the NBA after going undrafted and the team tried to mold him into something he clearly wasn’t. In their defense, Wallace stands closer to 6-foot-7 than he does his listed 6-foot-9 — and this was pre-fro. The idea of Wallace, who eventually became a center during an era when position mattered, playing shooting guard is dumbfounding.
Even after the failed experiment in Boston, Wallace wound up signing with the Washington Bullets as an undrafted rookie in 1996. For three seasons, he was virtually unknown playing behind the likes of Chris Webber and Juwan Howard. Making it into the rotation in his second and third seasons was a miracle enough for the second youngest of 11 children to Sadie Wallace.
Wallace went from growing up in poverty in White Hall, Alabama and making his own basketball hoops out of necessity, to playing on the biggest stage in basketball, making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
His fourth season was that year in Orlando, where Doc Rivers made him a full time starter. Still, Wallace was a relatively unknown player on a surprising, yet middling, 41-41 Magic team. Wallace was now off to Detroit as the Magic were about to take the league by storm with Hill and McGrady.
That first year in Detroit, Wallace instantly became the team’s second best player behind Jerry Stackhouse, who had a scoring season for the ages for the 32-50 Pistons. Wallace started 81 games and was proving to fans in Detroit that he wasn’t just some throw in for a Grant Hill sign and trade deal. Wallace averaged 6.4 points, 13.2 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 2.3 blocks per game that first year in Detroit. The Pistons were still a bad team, so his ascension was quiet.
Little known fact, Wallace was acquired in a sign and trade so that the money would work for Hill and the Magic, and also to get another asset in Atkins. However, Wallace was coming to Detroit regardless, he had agreed to a deal with the Pistons prior to the sign and trade. Often not publicized, but this was such a win for brand new GM Joe Dumars and his staff, had it been a straight signing, it would go on record as one of the greatest and most under the radar signings in NBA history, if not the greatest.
Meanwhile, in Orlando, Hill only played four games in his first season with the Magic. In his first four seasons with Orlando, Hill played in 47 of 328 games. It was the beginning of a tragic turn in the career of one of the league’s brightest stars.
In Detroit, Atkins and Wallace were proving to be foundational pieces for a team on the rise. In Wallace’s second season with the Pistons, he was staking his claim as the team’s franchise player. The Pistons reversed their record, improving to 50-32 during Rick Carlisle’s first year as head coach, and were one of the biggest surprises of that NBA season. Wallace averaged 13.2 rebounds, 1.7 steals and 3.5 blocks, leading the league in both blocks and rebounds, and won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year in a runaway fashion.
I’ll always remember the March 24, 2002 game against the Boston Celtics as Wallace’s coming out party on National TV from that season. The much improved Pistons were going up against a Celtics team neck and neck with them in the standings. It was a Sunday afternoon game on NBC, the first for this Stackhouse and Wallace led Pistons team. Wallace was an absolute monster scoring 13 points, grabbing a career-high 28 rebounds and blocking six shots in a 109-101 win. I remember being in the crowd with friends screaming the number rebound as he would grab each one… “10!….15!!…20!!!….28!!!!”
It was in that moment where The Palace of Auburn Hills was starting to get rowdy again. The fans were coming back and people were noticing. The Detroit Pistons were good again. Less than two years ago, we all thought the Pistons were going to be in the gutter for years, but that no name guy from Orlando was in the process of becoming something really special and taking our team to heights they hadn’t been since the days of the Bad Boys.
The Pistons lost in the second round of the playoffs to the Celtics that season, but they were moving in the right direction. That summer, Dumars signed Chauncey Billups on a value deal from the Minnesota Timberwolves and then shockingly traded Jerry Stackhouse to the Washington Wizards for Richard Hamilton right before the 2002-03 season. The vision of this team was clear, Wallace was the foundation of a stellar defense and now it was time to put the right pieces around him.
The next season, Wallace repeated as Defense Player of the Year and made his first of four straight All-Star appearances, leading the league in rebounds with 15.4 per game, blocking 3.2 shots and racking up 1.7 steals per game. He was a menace on defense, a force that was guarding the best big men in the league each and every night, but always available to step out on the perimeter and stick with a guard if need be. Wallace could cover all 94 feet of the court, and he did.
That 2002-03 season, the new look Pistons led by Wallace with Hamilton and Billups were swept out of the Eastern Conference Finals by the New Jersey Nets. The team was continuing to rise and the out of nowhere playoff leap by rookie Tayshaun Prince was a major development, but something was missing.
Wallace continued his dominance on the defensive end and the Pistons were looking like one of the elite teams in the NBA under new head coach Larry Brown to start the 2003-04 season, Sports Illustrated even named Wallace the first half NBA MVP during their mid-season issue. When the Pistons made their February trade deadline deal for Rasheed Wallace, their fate was sealed.
They had become one of the greatest defenses of all-time, making their late season statement with their record five straight games of holding teams under 70 points. The final piece of the puzzle was in tact. It was time to go into the playoffs and muck it up and play some of the ugliest NBA games over the last 20 years, but it was a beautiful sight as a Pistons fan.
It was already impossible that Ben Wallace made it to the NBA.
It was impossible that he became an NBA All-Star.
There was no way a team led by Ben Wallace was going to beat a Los Angeles Lakers team with Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and aging ring chasing Hall of Famers Gary Payton and Karl Malone.
Wallace took the challenge of guarding O’Neal like nobody else in the league was doing — one on one. Wallace did not want the help of a double team. The 6-foot-7 Wallace who was once brought into the Celtics camp to play shooting guard was guarding the most dominant force over the last decade in basketball — one one one — all 7-feet-1 and 330 pounds of him.
It worked.
The Pistons pulled off their iconic “Five Game Sweep” of the Lakers, ending their dynasty and breaking up the core of Kobe and Shaq. In the closing Game 5 of the series, Wallace was dominant with 15 points, 22 rebounds, three steals and a block. Billups won the Finals MVP that year and often gets credit for being the leader of that team, but Billups would be the first to tell you:
“Ben didn’t get the credit. Everybody gave me all the credit for being the leader of the team, and I was one of the leaders, but Ben, to me, set the culture before Rip and I got there,” Billups says. “It was on us to come in and just follow his blueprint. He didn’t get the credit he deserved for that, because he’s so quiet. But if you know, you know.”
The Goin’ To Work Detroit Pistons were Ben Wallace’s team.
That team did what Ben Wallace does — The Impossible.
It started with that no name guy from Orlando in the trade where the Pistons just hoped to get SOMETHING back from the loss of Grant Hill. From that seemingly devastating day in Pistons history, it took less than four years for the Pistons to ascend to the top of the mountain and have championship glory.
Wallace defied every odd, every stereotype of what a superstar is in the NBA. He did it his way, he did it in the perfect city to appreciate his game and with the perfect team to complement his talents and what he brings to a basketball court.
There may have been 58 names called during the 1996 NBA Draft not named Ben Wallace, but there are barely any that would ever be called before him now. Wallace entered the Hall of Fame last night after having the most impossible NBA career of all time.
Wallace is the first undrafted player to make the Hall of Fame.
His credentials speak for themselves:
The most Defensive Player of the Year Awards in league history — four.
Five All-NBA appearances. Four All-Star Games. Six All-Defensive Team honors.
Led the league in rebounds twice, blocks once.
The only player in league history with more blocks than fouls and more steals than turnovers.
He saved a franchise from a collapse — when a superstar left for greener pastures, he became a superstar unlike any in league history.
Most importantly, Ben Wallace wasn’t supposed to happen, but he made it happen.
A journey to greatness unlike any ever seen.
With Ben Wallace, you had to be there to see it. You’ll never look at a box score and fully understand the impact. There’s been great defensive players in league history. There’s been players like Rodman and Mutombo who made the Hall of Fame based on defense.
There’s never been a player a champion was built around whose only impact on the game came from their defense. An insane level on infectious defense that stymied the league for the better half of a decade.
Grant Hill made me cry.
Ben Wallace brought me tears of joy.
That no name guy from Orlando became my favorite basketball player of all-time.
There have been plenty of outstanding players inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame and there will be so many more legendary all-time players that follow Wallace’s induction, but without question, there will never be another Ben Wallace. He was an absolute one of one player.
An inspiration of work ethic, determination and humility.
The most unique and unlikely superstar the league ever saw.
It was Ben Wallace vs. Everybody, and he won.
Your legacy lives forever, Big Ben.
Welcome to the Hall of Fame.
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