A former three-sport athlete at Central High School in Hayneville, Ben Wallace became the first NBA player from the draft era to enter the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame after going undrafted.
The basketball shrine inducted Wallace as a member of its Class of 2021 on Saturday night in Springfield, Massachusetts.
“Legacies are built to last,” Wallace said during his enshrinement speech. “But what type of legacy are you building? What protects your legacy? I’ll tell you my legacy: I wasn’t welcome. I was too small. I couldn’t play the game the way they wanted me to play the game. Sound like an uneven game to me. Put me on a level playing field, and I’ll show you.”
Raised in the Lowndes County towns of Benton and White Hall, Wallace was the 10th of 11 children in his family and grew up with seven older brothers.
“This what my mama taught me,” Wallace said of Sadie Wallace, who didn’t live to see her youngest son enshrined. “Stand tall, stick your chest out, hold your head up. Now do it again.”
An encounter with NBA standout Charles Oakley at a basketball camp in Livingston provided Wallace with a mentor and led him to Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland for two seasons before completing his college career at NCAA Division II Virginia Union.
Wallace became a Division II All-American, but that didn’t get him into the NBA Draft. Wallace played briefly in Italy before joining the NBA’s Washington Bullets for three seasons. After one season with the Orlando Magic, Wallace was traded to the Detroit Pistons, and his Hall of Fame career ignited.
In his 16 NBA seasons, Wallace averaged only 5.7 points per game, and his highest single-season scoring average was 9.7. But Wallace excelled at the other end of the court in a way that few others have and made “Fear the Fro” as basketball catchphrase.
Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo are the only players in NBA history to be the league’s Defensive Player of the Year four times. Wallace won the award in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006. Wallace also was an NBA All-Defensive first-team selection five times.
Wallace led the NBA in rebounding twice and averaged at least 10.7 rebounds per game for seven straight seasons. In the 2001-02 season, Wallace led the NBA with 278 blocked shots.
Wallace was an NBA All-Star four times -- every season from 2002-03 to 2005-06 -- and played center when the Detroit Pistons won the NBA championship in 2004. Wallace was the epitome of Detroit’s Going To Work Era, and the Pistons retired Wallace’s No. 3 jersey in 2016.
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“Life didn’t give me a chance from the start,” Wallace said. “I kept fighting. I kept winning. I kept succeeding. …
“Life is not all about taking. Life is not all about conquering. Life is about competing.”
Wallace became the third member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to have played high school basketball in Alabama, joining Charles Barkley from Leeds High School and Artis Gilmore from Carver High School in Dothan.
“I just want to say thanks to basketball,” Wallace said. “I just want to be honest with basketball. Basketball was not my life path. Basketball was just in my life path. I took basketball and created a path for those who helped me. I took, I received, I gave back. I laid a path. I laid a track. It should be easy to find. I was stuck in it for quite some time.”
Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.