Fear the Fro

Feel-good "puff" piece on Ben Wallace, who should have gotten the finals MVP vote, IMHO.

NYT: Ben Wallace: A Folk Hero Whose Roots Run Deep

..A sign held up by someone in the crowd more or less told the tale: "Fear the 'Fro."

And in the back of a pickup truck, waving to the cheering multitude along the rolling, tree-lined thoroughfares was the lengthy honoree himself, Ben Wallace, the imposing, 6-foot-9, strong-as-a-wrecking-ball center for the Detroit Pistons, with his braided hair under a floppy blue hat.

Two and a half weeks earlier, Wallace, with his hair in an Afro as big as a bush and a wisp of a goatee, led his little-heralded, so-called blue-collar team to victory over the celebrated, highly favored Los Angeles Lakers in the N.B.A. finals by outdueling the mountainous Shaquille O'Neal.

"I like coming back home," Wallace said last week. "Do it every July Fourth. Everybody's cooking, and I'm just being Ben, just Ben, like the little kid I was running around the neighborhood."

More here

"That 'Fro, it was the symbol of black pride when the civil rights movement began. I know; I marched with Dr. King. And all of that paved the way, in my opinion, for Ben Wallace to become a full-fledged prime example of the American dream."

Wallace has never made a point of the Afro as a symbol, and Shirley Wallace, the eldest of his four sisters, said he wore it only because "he just loves it." But the echoes of the hairstyle's history, conscious or otherwise on Wallace's part, are unequivocally there. "I don't just play for myself," he said. "I play for everybody who was behind me."

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After the Pistons won Game 5 against the Lakers for the title, Wallace said Shaquille O'Neal told him: "You worked for it, you deserved it. If anybody deserved it, it was you, Ben."'

Speaking of Shaquille O'Neal, according to ESPN, Shaq wants to go to either the Dallas Mavericks or the Sacramento Kings. Now, that would be something......