Got to Give the People What They Want: True Stories and Flagrant Opinions from Center Court

by Jalen Rose

  In that Duke game, all of my emotions came together in a way that turned brashness into something that looked a whole lot like anger.

  To understand that game you have to understand that in the beginning of my life, I didn’t know what I didn’t have. One day, around eighth grade, I was riding with Curtis Hervey to a scrimmage that was at Detroit Country Day. To our left was Cass Lake. I looked out and saw all these people on their Jet Skis and boats. Wow, people jet skiing in Detroit! I didn’t know people could do that. Right then, I started realizing what I didn’t have and what I would have to do to get it. Take the harder path. Hustle for things, like my Uncle P. Work my butt off, like everyone in my family.

  Duke summoned images of all the lakes with people jet skiing on them that I’d ever driven by. And all the teams I’d played growing up that had been able to afford matching bags and warm-up suits, and plane tickets for lots of fans to travel far to see them. For me, Duke wasn’t just the number one–ranked team in the country. They were the team I had always played against. And always relished beating the most.

  Duke didn’t recruit me, and I never would have been interested in going there. These days, I have a lot of respect for Mike Krzyzewski, but as a player, I did not fit their mold. Nor was I interested in trying to. Duke was a place where, in my eyes, kids had taken the easy path. It was especially easy to work up that envy leading up to that game in December of 1991, considering who I was going to be looking at across the floor: Grant Hill. I hadn’t forgotten that AAU game five years earlier when he showed up with the brand-new shoes, new sweats, new bags, and, it turned out, a much better team. Now here we were again, and I was hyped. I had circled the date on my calendar from the minute I’d seen the schedule, been talking up the Duke game to my teammates, all that. To top it off, just a few months before, I’d watched Duke beat one of my favorite teams, UNLV, in the tournament. Now I was getting a chance for vengeance.

  If you were to read my mind at the time, and listen in to my conversations with my teammates, you would have come across the words “Grant Hill” and “Uncle Tom,” a term that people used to refer to other blacks who, it was assumed, had forgotten where they came from and acted like they were white. Would I use that term today to refer to someone? No. Would I even think it? No. Today I’m mature enough to know that successful black people, getting an education, earning money, and wearing nice clothes, are not acting white. They are becoming successful. But at age eighteen, I was coming from a very different place. And it provided great fuel for the adrenaline I needed to compete.

  Deep inside, I was jealous of Grant Hill. Of his dad, who went to Yale and played in the NFL. Of his mom, who was college roommates with Hillary Clinton. During a game, if he made a good pass, or the right play, the announcers would say, “Another piece of great fundamentals from Grant Hill,” or, “Once again, there’s Grant Hill, being a great teammate.” When they called my games (even back to high school), I never got that kind of praise, no matter how good the pass was, how passionate the defense was, or how fundamental the play was. It was all just more weight on the chip on my shoulder.

  Along with Grant, the All-Americans on that Duke team were two white guys, Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley. I knew Bobby Hurley’s dad was the coach of one of the best high school teams in the country, and that was something I could respect. Still, before I got to college, I think I had one white teammate. One, in all of my school and AAU teams. White people lived in other places, where the houses were bigger, the yards were prettier, and the wallets were thicker. That was a fact of life for me. While college, with the white teammates and thousands of white students around me, was starting to open up my eyes to a new perspective, as a freshman I was predisposed to resent a player like Christian Laettner, and to think he was an “overrated pussy,” as I said in the documentary. (Even though, as I learned on the floor, he was a total stud.)

  Consider what all the media and publicity and hype injected into the game as well. The black knights versus the white knights. I mean, our rosters were almost the reverse of each other: their stars were white, with blacks in supporting roles; our stars were black, with whites in supporting roles. Then there was the long shorts versus the short shorts; the idea that they were disciplined and we were hot dogs; and so on. Forget any resentment I had, it was the story line all the writers scripted for us.

  And we loved it. We loved being the rebels, the upstarts, the “Who are they’s?” and the “Who do they think they are’s?” It fit our collective personality perfectly. Reading cute little stories about this new “Fab Five” in September was cool, but seeing the writers’ faces when they came into our locker room, and N.W.A and Public Enemy and the Geto Boys were blasting, was better. Even before Muhammad Ali himself told us to, we wanted nothing more than to shock the world. That was the most fun. That most strengthened our brotherhood. That compelled us to play hard.

  We fell way behind in the first half of the game that afternoon, and then clawed our way back, basket by basket, in the second. And we did it our way—loudly and brashly—the same way we’d been doing it since our first day together at Michigan. We weren’t going to back down to anyone. Dunks, runners, threes, alley-oops—we threw everything at them. Late in the game, Laettner and I came together fighting for the ball. He thought I would give it up after the whistle—and even started laughing. You see why it wasn’t hard to hate him on the court. Anyway, he didn’t end up with the ball. Then we had a chance to win it at the buzzer, missed it, and it went to overtime, where Duke ultimately prevailed. It was like Rocky—we’d gone the distance with the champ but had come up a bit short.

  At Crisler Arena, it was as exciting as any game any Michigan fan had ever seen.

  —

  FROM THAT game on, everything took off: the attention we got, the focus on us, how we played, everything. The story line took us right back to another matchup with Duke in the national title game four months later. But before then we still had a lot of growing to do on the basketball court, and the Big Ten schedule gave us that opportunity. The Big Ten then was as strong as it’s ever been. I mentioned Calbert Cheaney, the Big Ten’s all-time leading scorer, playing for Bob Knight at Indiana, and Jimmy Jackson at Ohio State. Glenn Robinson, a future number-one overall draft pick, was at Purdue. Michael Finley was putting in work at Wisconsin. My old teammate Voshon Lenard was starting to do things at Minnesota. Michigan State with Shawn Respert and Coach Jud Heathcote was a top-twenty team. Illinois and Iowa had great coaching under Lou Henson and “Dr. Tom” Davis, respectively. We went 11-7 in the Big Ten. No game was easy. Once the ball was tipped, we were just another quality squad playing for the W.

  Of course, in the eyes of the media, it wasn’t so simple. The more they saw us, the less they knew what to do with us. The aspect of our style of play that shocked them more than anything else: trash-talking.

  Let’s go back for a little history lesson. First off, people have been trash-talking since the very beginning of sports. Babe Ruth calling his shot, that was good trash-talking right there. Satchel Paige was one of the all-time great trash-talkers. Obviously Ali. And in basketball, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird were two of the best trash-talkers the NBA has ever known. So it’s not like the Fab Five invented the art.

  I came to Michigan having been an all-around student of trash-talking almost since I could talk at all. The video game marathons at Uncle Paramore’s house were my initial education. Then I got to use what I learned out in the street as I learned to play basketball and other sports. As I grew up, and got into AAU and high school ball, I realized what trash-talking could do for me. I realized that it could elevate me to the next level.

  For me, trash-talking was a way to get into my opponent’s head, get him off his game, and give me an edge. Hitting a shot, great. Hitting a shot and screaming about it and letting the other guy know I was going to hit the next one, too—more than great. It was the tool I used to get myself in the zone I needed to be in to play the best I cou
ld. Think of it like this: If I had to play the game in silence, I wouldn’t have been as good. The adrenaline just wouldn’t have been there. God bless Barry Sanders and Derrick Rose and players who can get themselves to the level they need to get to without talking or emoting. I’m not one of them. In fact, to this day, the only way I can lift myself to that level is by getting emotional, by expressing myself, by trash-talking.

  I put in a guide to trash-talking at the end of this chapter, for all the people out there who need a few friendly tips. For me, the key was not holding back. I would say pretty much anything I needed to. You remember Acie Earl, who played for Iowa? He was built kind of funny, reminding me of how my sister was built. (No offense, Tam!) So I told him that, over and over again. I’d scream at coaches, right at Bobby Knight and Roy Williams and whoever else as I ran past on the court. I’d use language that I would never use off the court. Between the lines, I thought anything was fair game. If you ask them about playing me in college, Grant Hill and his Duke teammate Thomas Hill will probably tell you that during games, in the heat of battle, I called them “house niggas.” All I’ll say about that is we used the term plenty of other times against plenty of other players.

  If you’re a businessman, and you go to work, and you do whatever you have to do to make money, including firing people, or putting another company out of business, no one accuses you of being a bad person. If you’re a lawyer, and you defend someone accused of a crime, you don’t get labeled as evil. My point is: My job, from AAU to high school to college to the pros, was to do everything I could to play my best, and win. That’s it. And a central part of my arsenal—as much as my first step to my left, my three-pointer, my floater—was my ability to trash-talk, to get in my opponent’s head, raise my own game in the process, and give my team the best chance to win.

  At Michigan, all of us trash-talked. Within the Fab Five, it was as much trash-talking each other as trash-talking the other team. “Hey, he can’t stop you!” “Lock him up!” That kind of dialogue. That would be our way of putting us more in sync as a unit, getting the fans pumped up, getting the other team rattled. Whatever we were saying, we were pretty demonstrative about it. That didn’t change whether we were on the concrete court at South Quad, an arena with ten thousand people in it, or, in the case of a title game, a stadium with sixty thousand. Once all five of us were playing together for the majority of every game, our ongoing “conversation” and all the chest bumps and high fives and slaps that went along with it were on full display. Five guys egging each other on, feeding off each other’s energy. It came to be as much a part of our game as how we shot, passed, and rebounded.

  People criticized us and, in the next breath, praised Duke, Kentucky, Kansas for “playing like a team,” “playing cohesively,” “playing together,” and so forth. Which begs just one question:

  Then what the hell were we doing?

  —

  THE SEASON went on, and it felt like we got bigger with every game. At Michigan, we were huge. Everywhere else, our following was growing. Kids, students, peers, they’d stop us in airports and hotels and scream for us in arenas. Fans for other teams booed us louder than other teams, but you could tell they got us. They understood what our attitude and style were about. They wouldn’t have been doing that for just any other team.

  Inside our locker room, and inside our dorm rooms, the Fab Five got closer as a unit as the season went on. We all had our roles in the group, with our different personalities. We also had our own nicknames. Juwan was “Nook”—always the most mature—that came from the upbringing he’d gotten from his grandmother. I never saw him without a perfect haircut, or without a crease in his pants. We called Ray “Money,” because he was there every time we needed him on the court. He’d make any sacrifice necessary—playing a reserve role if we needed it, matching up against any guard or forward, making an extra pass. He had the most versatility—size, speed, whatever. Off the court, he used to like to fly under the radar. Jimmy was “Jim-Jam.” He could run, jump, and glide through the air. He had the Michael Strahan gap in his teeth. Real slick, always showing up clean. Cleaner than me. Jimmy and I developed probably my deepest friendship, largely owing to the fact that we wanted to hang out and kick it more than everybody else. My nickname was the same as it was in high school, “Jinx,” just like Sir Jinx, Ice Cube’s DJ. Because I used to predict things that came true. And then there was C-Webb, “The Truth.” He and I obviously went back the furthest, though I will say that while we all had other friends (like Juwan’s boy Lamont “Juice” Carter, who practically lived with us), Chris was the one member of the group who hung out a bit more with other people. That was totally cool but set him apart a bit.

  On the court, we were pretty much as good as advertised. Chris was, instantly, one of the best players in college basketball. Juwan was a top-notch big man from the start. Jimmy and Ray were as athletic and skilled as any two players on any court in the country. The way it worked out, I was actually our leading scorer. My best game of the season came out of what should have been a lowlight. I was late for a meeting before our Big Ten opener, away against Iowa, and Coach Fisher benched me (as he should have). We went down early, though, so I ended up going in three minutes after the tip. I never came out, and scored thirty-four, my college career high, in a big win. The boos never sounded so good.

  It was apparent that we were making an impact on the younger demo, but the old guard wasn’t so into it. Announcers. Writers. Even the referees hated on us. I remember there were these two Big Ten refs, Ed Hightower and Jim Burr. Ed retired just a few years ago, but Jim’s still reffing out there today. When we would see them out on the floor before a game, we knew, guaranteed, one of us was going to end up with two fouls before the first TV timeout. I remember one game against Northwestern, when we had a good play on a fast break and, typically, were pumped up afterwards. The other team called a timeout, and as we brought our stools out for the huddle, Hightower came over, pointed to me, and said to Coach, “If this guy smiles again, or laughs, I’m gonna give him a technical foul and throw him out of the game.” For what? For smiling? For laughing?

  For playing the game the way we played it?

  —

  IT WAS definitely generational. But I think it’s obvious that the central piece of the puzzle was, is, and always will be race. The contrast between Duke and Michigan was based on that. The shock value of our trash-talking, and our demonstrative style of play, was based on that. People didn’t have any problem in Hoosiers when the farm boys celebrated all over the court as they made their way through the state tournament. But when we did the same thing, we looked a lot different, and a lot of people—including the folks who were writing about us, and commentating on our games—didn’t know how to handle that.

  Our style was an extension of how we’d played in high school. If you had gone to a game like Southwestern versus Cooley, you would have seen a lot of the same style of play. But there, it was mostly black players playing in front of mostly black crowds. Now the audience was made up of a completely different demographic. During games, my jersey would get pulled to the side, and the tattoo I had gotten on my chest after my senior year of high school would peek out. The people watching didn’t know what to do with that, because very few people in mainstream culture had tattoos back then. I’d wear my diamond (okay, fine, they were cubic zirconia specials) earrings in the press conferences and during interviews. People didn’t know what to do with a black college basketball player wearing earrings. We weren’t the first group to do all this, but we were the first group a lot of people noticed. All of our shaved heads (except Juwan, who would never get his head shaved—pretty-boy props) represented something to people, something they weren’t so comfortable with. Believe me, they were calling us thugs long before the word got tossed around with Richard Sherman (Compton-born, Stanford grad) or any other black star from today’s sports world.

  It wasn’t like we were inventing all this style on our o
wn. We were following the hip-hop artists whose songs we listened to, and whose videos we watched, and whose music told stories that we could relate to and tap into. Hip-hop wasn’t mainstream the way it is today, but it was starting to explode. And we saw ourselves as an extension of what it was about. Personally, I felt like basketball was my way of getting to the same level of prominence as those artists. On the court, I told myself I was a “nigga with an attitude.”

  We were also following in the footsteps of the teams at UNLV, who’d embraced their renegade, outlaw image and ridden it all the way to a national title. (And they were following in the footsteps of another of my favorite teams, John Thompson’s Georgetown Hoyas.) Though for us, I think the key was in the contrast. We weren’t out on the Strip in Vegas (or in a big city like Washington); we were representing the heartland of the country in Michigan. Which meant that once we stepped out and did our thing, we had to own it. And we absolutely owned it.

  A generation earlier, basketball had been a very urban game. In the ’60s and ’70s, it was closely associated with the playground style as Dr. J and the ABA took the reins of where the sport was going. And right after that, related or not, there had been a downturn, in part due to drugs, but undeniably also based on the fact that the game was considered to be too black to appeal to a widespread white audience. Then, in the ’80s, the popularity of the game was transformed, with black superstars like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan transcending race with their wholesome images. And Larry Bird, a white superstar, right next to them.