I like so many others my age at the time, loved and adored the University of Michigan basketball team and their ballyhooed Fab Five.
My favorite player out the group was of course Chris Webber.
I had an authentic Nike Maize Michigan jersey with the number 4 on the back. Matching Maize shorts that I would hoop in to go with it.
I can remember April 5, 1993 like it was yesterday.
When Webber grabbed that rebound with 13 seconds left, I truly expected him to go coast to coast, and score the winning basket or get a and one.
Never in my wildest dreams did I expect Webber to call a timeout when the team had none remaining.
The rest is history, but anyone who knows, realizes Chris Webber was really never the same after that play.
Some twenty years later everyone has moved on with their lives, Webber an analyst for NBA TV, and Jalen Rose is blossoming in his analyst role for ESPN.
Rose a member of the Fab Five and newly hired analyst for ESPN’s NBA pregame show recently sat down with Bill Simmons to talk a few things basketball.
Rose who says all the Fab Five members will always be brothers, also stated that his relationship with Webber “is complicated,” and that he feels the infamous “timeout really messed Webber up emotionally.”
“I don’t talk to him as much as I should,” Rose said. “It’s actually disappointing. We’ve never had an argument, we’ve never had a disagreement, we’ve never had a beef. And he may or may not ever admit this, I think that timeout really screwed him up emotionally. To the point where he wanted to disassociate himself with the entire Michigan scenario. He wants to act like it never happened. And so a domino effect of that has been the relationships with not just me, with other members of the Fab Five.”