The different one

Sporting News, The, Dec 6, 1993 by Mitch Albom

Jalen Rose would outcool Elvis. He would outcool James Dean, James Brown, James Earl Jones. He would stare them down from atop his stretched, bony body, then sneer and go, "You aint nuthin'." This is Jalen's strength, or at least it always was. He had seen so much. He had endured so much. There was nothing that would throw him, nothing that would knock him off the perch of his own basketball hipness.

For two years at Michigan, Jalen Rose led the Wolverines and their legendary Fab Five with this kind of swagger. People think it was Chris Webber, but it was not. Jalen could yank Chris around by the nose. Born on the hard side of Detroit, Jalen seemed to wear his past on his sleeve. "When you come from where I come from...," he would begin sentences. The other players fell in line behind his boasting. Besides, he backed it up on the court. If you challenged him, he burned you. If you taunted him, he'd slam on you, then yell, "I just buried you. How'd it feel?" He would swoop from behind and holler, "BLOCK PARTY!" as he slapped away your shot. He would race to the 3-point line, launch a bomb - in those flapping yellow shorts - and yell, "FLURRIES!" as if his shots would fall like snow. He was the best trash-talker on the team. He was in control.

And now he is (gulp) an upperclassman. And he finds himself without the two biggest buffers of his life.. Webber, who had been his best friend and basketball shadow since they were 11 years old, and Perry Watson, his high school coach, assistant Michigan coach and surrogate father since Jalen's early days in Detroit. Webber, of course, went to the NBA. Watson left Steve Fisher's staff to become head coach at the University of Detroit.

And things are suddenly quiet for Rose. Whenever he would get too mischievous, too troublesome, too wild, he could hide behind Webber or Watson. They would explain him, and free him, once again, to be his impetuous self.

Now they are gone, and Rose finds himself on a team that has four star players and little else. The bench is gone. The big man is gone. They actually held open tryouts a few weeks back for the U-M basketball team, and they took some of what they found. This, a school that two years ago boasted The Greatest Class Ever Recruited.

And Jalen? He has to grow up. He has to lead Michigan is still one of the best teams in the nation, but the Wolverines can no longer just show up in other people's gyms with their black socks, bald heads and long shorts and expect to blow the opponent away.

Jalen is 20 years old, and the world is looking different.

And yet, he claims he's got it under control - "I'm straight," he says - and those who know him believe him. He was always the most remarkable, charismatic, perplexing and frustrating member of the Fab Five. He did what he said he would do.

In writing the book, "Fab Five," I discovered at the core of Jalen's rambunctious soul was his relationship with his absent father, Jimmy Walker, the former NBA All-Star. Jalen never met him. He rarely spoke about him. And yet the parallels between the two were undeniable.

It took more than a year, but I finally tracked down Jimmy Walker. He proved as mysterious and elusive as his son, but you saw where the walk, the talk and the hidden but obvious vulnerability came from.

It was in the genes.

Not much Jalen Rose did was normal, from the time he almost drowned trying to jump across a swimming pool, to the time he was arrested in a drug bust while playing video games. Of all the Fab Five, he was at once the most puzzling, disturbing, fascinating, and charming, whether dressing like a rap star, mouthing off to opponents, or hugging a teammate and almost choking him with those long stringy arms. Like the magician Merlin in British mythology, Jalen could become almost anything he wanted, a dazzler, a screamer, a liar, a child, a friend, an enemy.

But much of who he was seemed to come directly from the genes of a man he does not know and has never met.

Jimmy Walker.

His father.

Jimmy Walker was a college All-American at Providence, and a flashy, lean first-round draft pick for the Detroit Pistons in 1967. He was a great player, known for confidence in his ballhandling. His signature move was "the spin," in which he came at you full force, then swung the other direction, 180 degrees, leaving you in his fumes. He was also a dead-eye shooter. And, like the son he would father, he was a talker. One time, during a game, he was hitting baskets with such accuracy he ran up to the ref and said, "Hey, you better do something, there's something wrong with this ball."

"What?" the ref said.

"It keeps going in."

Among the Pistons, Walker was also known to party all night, sleep all day, take a bath, and be ready to go. He liked his women, had plenty of them, and fathered at least four children that people knew of, without ever marrying the mothers, or taking much, if any, financial responsibility.

He hooked up with Jeanne late in his Pistons career - although he was married at the time - and for a while, they made a popular couple. But, true to form, he was gone by the time the baby came.