After what was a nonstop college basketball filled weekend for me, I decided to end the three day sports fest with a documentary on the one of the most memorable teams in all of college hoops. ESPN made a movie on Michigan’s Fab Five, their elite basketball team from the early 90’s, and as much as it killed me to have to watch the Blue and Maze of Michigan for two hours, the story made a really interesting point.
For those of you who don’t know, the “Fab Five” is the name given to the crop of freshman recruited by the University of Michigan Wolverine basketball program in 1991. Now although during the time of the Fab Five, I was more interested in Barbie than basketball, I am very aware of who these players were and what they did. In the college basketball world, this class of freshmen was considered to be the best class ever recruited and it was those athletes that would change the game as the world knew it. The Wolverines road the coattails of the fabulous youngsters straight to back to back final fours and NCAA championship finals but both times, the iconic team came up short, losing the title to Duke in 1992 and UNC in 1993. Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson aimed to shock the world and 20 years later, it doesn’t take an ESPN documentary to prove they did just that.
In his interview last night, Jalen Rose made an interesting point. Basically he said he would rather be remembered as a member of Michigan’s Fab Five than be forgotten as a part of the NCAA title teams that beat them. Sure the names Christian Laettner and Grant Hill might stand out as great players but few would refer to them as members of the 1992 Duke Blue Devil team that beat the freshman Wolverine’s in their first NCAA Championship appearance. That year will always be about the five freshmen who went from unexpected to national title contenders. I can’t tell you who the starting five for the North Carolina Tarheels were in 1993 when they took the title but Chris Webber taking a time out when Michigan had none left, will stand out in history forever. Even though the Kings of Tabacco Road proved they were superior to the Fab Five in both of those years, it is the Wolverine’s that made the biggest impact on the game.
They listened to hip hop music and opted to wear big baggy shorts, black shoes and black socks. Shaved heads, tattoos and earrings gave them a unique look and it was their bash, trash talking, controversial attitudes that made them a constant presence in the media. People referred to their style and play as playground basketball but regardless of all that, they were nothing short of electric on a basketball court. I will steal some timeless phrases from broadcasting great Dick Vital and say that these five superstars, the true definition of Diaper Dandies, were simply awesome baby. Maybe they never won a national championship or fully lived up the hype and potential that they had but these kids infused college hoops with a whole new culture.
But what goes up must come down and in this case it would be the 1992 and 1993 final four banners that hung in Michigan’s Crisler Arena. Due to a scandal involving several Michigan basketball players taking money from a booster as college athletes including Chris Webber, the Fab Five’s legacy was erased from the record books. However, even though you can remove stats and scores or take down banners, you are unable to alter memories. The Fab Five and what they did will never be forgotten.
Now for the moral of this tale. What they did in the win and loss column of the stat sheet was one thing but what they did as a team was something completely different. Sure they were excellent basketball players but they were not unbeatable. These kids wanted to shock the world and they did just that by daring to be different. They stood by who they were and played that way despite their critics. The members of the Fab Five have no national collegiate titles or even NBA championships under their belts but what they do have is a legacy that will live on forever simply because they were who they were. Not a bad little life lesson for all of us if you ask me.
“Media members would judge us by more than just how we played. They would judge us by how we dress.” – ESPN Fab Five Documentary
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