Chris Webber praises and congratulates Beilein and team on championship.
Former Michigan basketball player Chris Webber was on the Rich Eisen show a few days ago and to my surprise, he congratulated and praised Beilein and the team. I know he doesn't have the best relationship with the univeristy, Jalen and even some of the fans, but I'm glad to know he still watches from afar. I'm personally a big C-Webb fan, as I know there are many out there who still are as well. Just nice to see him acknowledge coach and the team publicly. Also, gives his insight on the NBA, college basketball and how we can possibly fix the issues it currently has. Good listen overall.
Starts at 7:50
Trie to embed, not working for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3degrsZF-TA
WHY ARE WE TALKING IN BOLD
But I love that he chose Michigan
Love the effort he gave as a Wolverine
Certainly wish him the best. Chris, you CAN go home again. Heal that nasty wound with your teammates.
March 13th, 2018 at 10:53 AM ^
Don't think there's any need to villify Webber for the Ed Martin fiasco. Things got worse after the Fab Five was gone with the Bullock & Traylor teams, Steve Fischer allowing Martin to hang around, Mateen Cleaves car wreck, etc.
I could watch the clip of freshman Webber dunking on OSU in the regional final OT all day long.
The Fab Five was a transformational team and movement in college basketball specifically and sports in general. The idealist in me wishes the relations would thaw a bit.
And C-Webb was ridiculously talented. Ginormous hands that could shoot and pass. I wish he had his head on a little straighter in the early days of Nellie Ball. I think he'll eventually get into the Hall - if T-Mac can then C-Webb CERTAINLY should - but I shake my head wondering what could have been...
He's definitely polarizing in our fan base, but live and let go I say. The Fab Five was an incredible run and story and hope they will be acknolwedged as such in the future. Especially considering what we all know is most likely happening aorund the country every year. Cool too see Webber giving this small amount of love. Wonder if Jalen reaches out again. Real tragedy is what could have been a lifelong friendship fracturing over all this.
Polarizing but shouldn't be IMO. This happened so long ago that it's high time we get past it. Screwed up, yeah but why are so many people still crying over what happend in the early 1990s? Damn, people! It's not like he murdered or raped someone. he didn't rub his balls on some girl's face like Peyton Manning.
Not sure if Beilein's interview with Eisen last week made it to the board or not, but here is it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSYZ-qPoNx4
Pretty good stuff as he addresses several topics including his strategy for recruiting one-and-done type players, which has been the source of much hand-wringing here over the years.
While it's nice to hear him praise the team, this thread's a bit misleading - of the nearly 12 minutes in that segment, less than 30 seconds is about Michigan basketball. He briefly mentions what a nice job Beilein's done and then moves on to the one-and-done rule.
wouldn't say that. He was never really specifically asked about Michigan and went out of his way to praise Beilein and "the boys" on the BTT championship. It may have been brief but it was at least a glimmer of an olive branch.
March 12th, 2018 at 10:07 PM ^
definitely a polarizing figure in Michigan sports history.
That said, I am hopeful that the university, his team mates and Chris himself are able to reconcile eventually.
They were transformative figures in the history of the NCAA...the fact that kids nowadays still talk of them is pretty amazing.
Wonder when they will ask him to be commencement speaker???
I hear from him the better.
I'm pretty much in the camp of Fab Five-related threads being treated the same way as Bleacher Report and Mike Valenti, especially the closer we get to the NCAA tournament each year. Don't need to rehash this stuff, nor give these guys the attention they still crave from a fanbase/program that suffered through a lot of bad basketball and scandal because of guys like Chris Webber. Enough, year after year after year.
I know it may be a little extreme the other way for him, but he goes out of his way to NEVER be discussed regarding Michigan and his time there. It may be that Jalen uses March Madness to try to re-live the "glory days" a little bit but this is like the first time in a long time that Webber has even hinted at a recognition of his time spent at Michigan let alone looking for "attention" from it.
And actually, I think it is pretty cool that King, Howard and Rose and Jackson still identified enough with the Michigan program to come to the Final Four in 2013. I don't remember seeing any other former Michigan players there, let alone just mingling with the crowd at large. Not all of these guys should be viewed as some kind of plague, Howard, King, and Jackson never took a penny and have gone on to be very respectable and respected alums. Jalen has his mis-steps but he is a consensus good guy and still works hard in the Detroit community.
I don't view the Fab Five as some "disgrace" and I don't think most fans do. What happened to Michigan's basketball team, the Fab Five and thereafter, was multi-faceted and took on a lot of faces. The actual players themselves, as people, being this "evil" or "forever stain" on Michigan athletics is not one of them, at least not to me.
He met Ed Martin when he was like 12, when Martin tried to recruit him to go to Detroit Southwestern. The NCAA could have ruled that they had a legitimate relationship since it predated high school (which is supposed to be the cutoff point), but they threw the book at him instead and U-M accepted it. That would probably be why he's mad.
He's never come and said it, but I suspect this is it.
He might also feel unfairly singled out considering that Jalen Rose took gifts from Martin as well, but wasn't declared retroactively ineligible.
don't think it is any of that. At least not the primary reason why he distances himself so harshly from Michigan. The infractions and the grand jury stuff, I think that is part of it. But really I think Webber was legitimately traumatized by the Timeout and prefers not to go out of his way to re-live it.
I think that is why a lot of the other players don't get why he doesn't want to be chummy with them, I don't think Webber wants to remember it like they do. Think about it. He is not looking back on the same experience they are. His personal memory includes probably the worst moment of his life.
Jimmy King said on the "Fab Five" documentary that he and Webber had never to this day discussed the timeout and that doesn't surprise me. Webber was 19 years old when that happened, and the biggest star in college sports by a length. An event like that is not an easy pill to swallow for a kid. I think that play really kind of actually shaped Webber for years to come and stuck with him.
or for what reason. The fact is and always has been that he lied about what happened to a grand jury and has never publicly taken any responsibility for his part in the Ed Martin scandal. The same scandal that nuked our basketball program for over 10 years. Despite that, I'm still open to bringing him back into the Michigan Family again if he shows any kind of remorse, or apologizes for what happened. He seems to not care about that, so whatever.
The scandal isn't the reason why our basketball program sucked for a decade. A terrible coaching hire (Ellerbe) followed by a mediocre hire (Amaker) had more to do with it.
If you make the right hire, NCAA sanctions don't have to be crippling at all. Look at OSU football post-Tressel.
For four years, we had 12 scholarships to give out instead of 13. That's not that big of a deal.
Could be (especially in Ellerbe's case) but that was on us, not the NCAA.
I will say that for the other three players whose careers were vacated (Traylor, Taylor, Bullock) there wasn't much of an excuse - Martin was by this time a designed booster and they knew the score. But Webber's case legitimately falls into a gray area and we could have challenged the NCAA on it.
But I understood that his motivation was to protect Steve Fisher. Again, you don't like under oath, but it wasn't like he faced any risk of prosecution if he'd said "sure, I took money." There may be more to it, but if that's correct it's a mitigating factor.
But I understood that his motivation was to protect Steve Fisher. Again, you don't like under oath, but it wasn't like he faced any risk of prosecution if he'd said "sure, I took money." There may be more to it, but if that's correct it's a mitigating factor.
The same scandal that nuked our basketball program for over 10 yearsThe sanctions weren't nearly as devastating as people suggest. We were banned from the postseason for one season (2002-03) and lost one scholarship a year for four years (2002-06). That's not really why our program fell apart.
I'd guess there's some anger at the system that he associates more with the university and athletic department than he does specifically with the basketball program. From his perspective, he was a world class talent who the university and athletic department promoted and made a killing off of, yet he didn't see any of that money (for purposes of this post, I'm not debating the merits of scholarship money equaling pay). He may think that as a result of his bitterness over the situation, he was more susceptible to the influences of a two-bit hustler who used Webber in a criminal enterprise leading ultimately to Webber's later guilty plea (obviously leaves out self-determination and questionable decisions even after he should have known better, but just trying to explain how he might feel).
With the current coaching staff and players. They weren't ones he felt shaft him. Nothing's ever gonna change though between Jalen and him
This comment isn't pro-Webber or anti-Webber, but:
Are we now using tosu as the standard for what UM should do?
Because I'd like to think we could follow a better example that theirs. Or better still - set one of our own.
What's sad is that there's an even lower bracket we could go after. We could aspire to be like PSU with their praise of Jo Pa. It's all about perspective. lol