Chris Webber’s ongoing beef with Jalen Rose has kept Michigan’s legendary “Fab Five” from reuniting

-The first time Jalen Rose met Chris Webber they were 12 years old. Jalen told Chris, "You have the 'lamest game I've ever seen.'" And the way Rose describes it, he and Webber should have been rivals from then on. While Jalen was "taking two public buses to across town at dawn" to attend Detroit's Southwestern High School, Chris performed at the much fancier Detroit Country Day private school. Rose was a well-regarded prospect, but Webber received more publicity as did Mr. Michigan." Basketball title by a wide margin over second place Rose. Instead, envy might have come between them; when Webber signed to join the

legendary

University of Michigan recruiting class in 1991, Rose followed him because the two had become close friends.

Chris and Jalen stayed. tight throughout college, but the end of their wild ride at Michigan and the extremely complicated legacy of the Fab Five recruiting class has torn them apart. The seeds of this meat were planted in the early 90s and took almost 30 years to reach full flowering. (Playing classical piano) Beef grows on trees, I guess? I don't know who writes this garbage. Anyway, Rose and Webber were the two Michigan-born members of the Fab Five, a Wolverines lineup that revolutionized the style and structure of college basketball, made important statements about amateurism and capitalism, and was really good at the sports.

The feisty forward and the smooth but thunderous big man were the leading scorers on a team that reached back-to-back NCAA Finals under coach Steve Fisher. Webber became the first pick in the 1993 NBA draft, at the time a rare and impressive honor for a freshman. He would go on to have an excellent professional career and earn his first All-Star selection in Washington, where he played alongside fellow Fab Fivesman Juwan Howard. He then

rose

to truly elite status in Sacramento before knee injuries slowed him down. Rose, like Howard, turned pro after his third year and became a 94th first-round pick.

He had some very good years on some very good Indiana Pacers teams. (he plays violin) Webber and Rose left the league in the late 2000s and both made a quick transition to television careers that are still going strong. It sounds simple when you paint it with broad strokes, it seems like they should still be friends, but we neglected a few things. Something crucial happened and most of what I just told you officially didn't happen and it all has to do with Chris Webber. Number one: Michigan's 1992 NCAA Tournament timeout was an exciting surprise: They were a sixth seed with

five

freshmen starting, and although they lost to Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and the Duke Blue Devils in the In the end, they hurt.

Most people were delighted that the Wolverines had made it this far. 93 was different. Michigan entered March Madness as a favorite and going into the final they fully believed they would defeat North Carolina, but, trailing by two in the final seconds, Webber committed a now-infamous infraction. Well, he traveled first, but that wasn't called, after that, Webber dribbled up the court and got stuck right in front of his own bench and tried to call a timeout even though Michigan had run out of them. The resulting technical foul extinguished any hope of Michigan winning it all. Coach Fisher and Webber's teammates were quick to console their big star and insisted that he wasn't the reason they lost, that they wouldn't even have had a championship to lose if it weren't for Webber's brilliance, but Webber clearly took the collapse hard.

The scenes where he walks off the court and then faces the media are painful to watch and there wasn't much time to resolve this pain. Webber boldly declared in favor of the draft just weeks later. - I have decided to become a Pro, this decision I felt was necessary to move forward and move forward. -He began his career with the Golden State Warriors while the remaining four stars spent one more season at Michigan. This time falling in the Elite Eight. So that's the first thing. The second thing didn't affect Webber until years later and may never have happened if not for a car accident that had nothing to do with him.

In February 1996, star recruit Mateen Cleaves visited Michigan and the team's stars brought him to town. Returning from a party, Maurice Taylor lost control and flipped his SUV, breaking teammate Robert Traylor's arm and sparking an investigation into what the Wolverines had been doing that night with a recruit in tow. An investigation by the NCAA and the university revealed nothing monumental, but later reports found that the players had been at the home of well-known Michigan backup Ed Martin. Which led to further investigations and, ultimately, the firing of Steve Fisher. The feds then stepped in and discovered that Martin was running an illegal gambling operation and had made payments over the years to several Michigan athletes and prospects.

The subpoenas led numerous players, coaches and their families to testify before a grand jury in 2000. Rose, like some others, admitted to accepting small amounts of cash from Martin, but emerged essentially unscathed from the legal process. This is not the case with Webber, although Chris had been especially close to Martin since his youth, and previous reports of large money exchanges did not arise from his initial testimony, but in 2002, Martin finally pleaded guilty to charges which included lending hundreds of thousands of dollars. to Webber et al. Federal authorities therefore charged Webber with lying to the grand jury in 2000.

He initially claimed his innocence, but eventually admitted to receiving money and pleaded guilty to criminal contempt to avoid a prison sentence. The NCAA and self-imposed sanctions pushed Michigan basketball to erase the past from him. The Wolverines officially vacated a bunch of wins from the Fab Five era, removed their final four banners and removed Webber's name from the individual record books. And there were future sanctions, too, a brief postseason suspension but also a 10-year separation from Webber and three other players directly implicated in the Martin scandal, no contact, no business, nothing at all. So yes, the Fab Five's legacy is a complicated one, and it's largely down to Webber.

We should acknowledge that the Webber pay scandal probably wouldn't exist outside of an unfair system in which great college athletes receive none of the money they earn for their schools, but I digress. Still, memories of the timeout didn't really haunt Webber once his career passed immediately afterward. Webber felt comfortable talking about it. He spoke to SI for a major story just a few weeks later and didn't hear much about the incident once he came on board. the NBA. Partly because he became a star so quickly, partly because he found new drama in the pros. Over time, Webber and his family were able to laugh about that humiliating final moment as a college player.

The Ed Martin scandal was a different story, before confessing in his eventual plea deal. Webber was adamant in fighting the charges and equally adamant in his disparagement of Ed Martin. Rose and Webber had drifted apart as friends in different cities often do after college, but Chris lying and then lying about lying was, according to Jalen, the final blow to their relationship. But they were still in the league. Rose didn't convey his feelings and Webber certainly wasn't going to talk about those things even years later, while he signed with his hometown Pistons. There are photos of the two together during Webber's forced dissociation from school, and they even appeared in some of the same television series. segments examining the legacy of the Fab Five.

While Rose insisted that no penalty could undo those teams' success, he was clearly upset by the fabricated distance and dropped banners. When the final four arrived in Detroit in 2009, Rose and Jimmy King pushed for a Fab Five reunion, but Michigan wouldn't allow them to do so on campus and Webber decided not to show up. And then there was 30 for 30. Rose produced the 2011 ESPN documentary about the Fab Five, which is excellent and worth watching. There were rumors that Webber initially agreed to participate, but ultimately he was the only major member of that team who did not. Instead, the film depended on the other four stars, Steve Fisher and upperclassmen like Rob Pelinka, all talking about Chris and his mistakes.

Towards the end, a school administrator implores Chris to apologize. -Chris simply needs to acknowledge that he made a mistake, apologize for those mistakes and I think he would have a huge impact on our ability to heal this situation and move forward in a very positive way. -Him It feels a little unfair, but that's what happens when possibly the central subject of a documentary refuses to appear in it. While Webber

kept

his distance, Rose

kept

the floodgates open. In 2013, the Wolverines returned to the national championship. Rose, Howard, Jackson and King planned to attend the finals against Louisville, and on a Grantland podcast, Rose begged Webber to appear as well.

Chris was the elephant in the room, making any potential reunion awkward. Webber appeared separately while Rose, Howard, King and Jackson applauded together in the crowd, the elephant in the room being upstairs in a private suite. Later that year, Webber's 10-year disassociation with Michigan finally ended. But the banners remained in storage and Rose continued talking. She didn't quite say that Webber should apologize, but she did say how he would apologize if he were in Chris's place. And in another episode of the podcast, he and Bill Simmons said that Webber turned his back on Rose in the NBA Finals.

In 2014, Rose continued to publicly address Webber as a sort of spokesperson for the other members of the Fab Five. Since the entire lineup hadn't really been together since that fateful night in 1993. And he went further by firmly stating that Webber should do right by his teammates Steve Fisher and the now deceased Martin and apologize. In 2015, Dan Patrick finally got Webber to answer a lot, talking about the timeout and how he addressed it on 30 for 30. I've always accepted the timeout. I know the Fab Five documentary makes it sound like, Oh my God, I'm so afraid to talk about it. -And he talked about that documentary as a whole. - Did you like the Fab Five documentary? - I love the boys and I think we miss them a lot. -He insisted that he had been willing to participate in the documentary but that the interview requests had ambushed him a bit. - They called and said, hey, we want you to be at a doctor.

I said, hell yeah, I'll be at the doctor. (stutters) Well, what's going on? He said, well, we'll finish next week, we have to find you, I say, wait a minute. -And he implied that Rose had put himself and his fame above the Fab Five's legacy. - Many people after they retire or when they are looking for work or when they want to be relevant. - They embellish. - Not really, yeah, and you know my thing is that it's always been about the

five

of us, you know? - That's a lot. Jimmy King called the part about the late request for the interview an outright lie.

And Rose came back swinging, I'm just going to read this. One guy traveled and then called a timeout. Some guy lied to a grand jury and didn't apologize. Some guy tried to get around the HBO documentary. One guy ignored multiple requests from everyone involved after agreeing to participate. One guy played as Obama and sat in a suite during Michigan's recent title game. Some guy slandered Ed Martin after everything he did for him and his family. One guy is not in contact with the other four, which is fine. One guy has been making a rebuttal documentary for four years.

One guy is clearly delusional and still denying it. So that's also saying a lot when Chris came back in October 2015, he was adamant that he didn't want to talk about Jalen anymore. -Where are you with Jalen in terms of your relationship? - Wherever he was. - Wherever it was, I mean, you know the last time... - I mean, Doug, we're not talking about you not getting that interview (mumbles). I'm talking about Wake Forest. I'm not talking about him. I talked about him once on the Dan Patrick show and that was it. - But at that time Rose was promoting a book.

A book that told stories of Webber snubbing him and the other Wolverines during their NBA days. Not returning people's calls, complaining about free tickets, complaining about hotel rooms for his friends when he made the All-Star team. And about the documentary, Rose stated that he had initial acceptance from Webber, who then changed and decided that he did not want to talk about his past. Just to release a separate documentary forHBO, Rose even went into greater detail about the time Webber swore at him in the NBA Finals. And she ended a long section on Webber by once again asking him to take responsibility for his transgressions and apologize.

That really seems to be Rose's main problem in recent years. He has blamed Webber for the continued burial of the Fab Five's legacy, including Coach Fisher's lack of recognition. Because he's on television. Rose gets asked about these things a lot and he always puts the ball in Webber's court by saying that he is still tormented. - I think it is something that emotionally still torments him in many ways. He's coming home, buddy, the Fab Five brothers love you, the University of Michigan loves you. Let him do what he does. -Meanwhile he is here analyzing the work on national television.

Dan Patrick started C-Webb again in 2018. Webber said he talks to some of the other guys. - I talk to Juwan like every damn day. I talk to Ray and Juwan often. I haven't spoken to Jalen in a while. -He said his feelings about the timeout have been mischaracterized. -All this about (mocking) he doesn't know that he can't come back, it hurts him a lot the moment he's crushed, and mentally he can't be with the five of us. Like I don't, you know. -He tried to explain his seating arrangement at the Michigan Louisville final. -And everyone said, well Chris went up to his suite and he couldn't, well, on paper he was still excluded from school. -And he seconded Patrick's hopes for a Fab Five reunion, but blamed Rose's trolling for the tension. -Because I have been trolled, I believe that no human being in the history of sports has been trolled by someone who considers your friend, it is hard. -He also appeared on Sway in the Morning and said something similar, that Rose had broken a code by making his problems public. -When he broke that code of what I feel in his career, that hurt me as a man. -And regarding the trolling accusation, Rose insisted that he did not want to discuss this conflict in the media and then discussed it in the media. - I don't need to talk about him to advance in my career.

I'm not selling myself. I am not a shill for the media. I don't sell my soul to talk about sports on television. - And this response to Webber being named an honorary captain by Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh definitely seemed like trolling. - I am elated by this news, I am not surprised by this news, and it is respectfully calculated. - And that's more or less how things are. Webber says that he wants to reunite with the Fab Five and get the team's legacy back on track, but he's a little touchy-feely and wants all of that to be done on his terms.

Rose thinks all it will take is for Webber to apologize for his mistakes, but she's definitely not listening to Webber's sensitivity about those mistakes. It's frustrating that this

legendary

quintet has fractured at what was once the tightest hinge of it. But I have faith that these two will one day put aside their differences. Both have said that one day they could be friends again. What will it take for that? Maybe Webber will finally publish a book or documentary that tells the full version of his story. Maybe it's Rose turning down the heat a bit or the university relenting in its erasure of the Fab Five's history.

Right now, as I speak to you,

beef

is keeping you apart. But maybe someday, maybe when you see this. The Fab Five brotherhood will be complete again.