IN THE ESPN documentary "The Fab Five," which highlights the starting lineup of freshmen on a University of Michigan basketball team in the early 1990s, former Fab Five player Jalen Rose admits that he resented rival Duke because "schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms." Uncle Tom was originally a character in the Harriet Beecher Stowe novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but the term is considered today to be a derogatory racial slur referring to a black person who sells out his or her heritage while acting subservient to white people.
Last week, Duke alumnus Grant Hill wrote a letter on his website, a shortened version of which appeared as an online editorial in The New York Times, defending his black heritage and the past and present black players on the Duke basketball team. Rose's comments have polarized much of the sports world to the point where many are calling for ESPN to fire him. However, Rose not only deserves to keep his job but also should be praised for his courage and candidness.
Seventeen is an age at which adolescents feel, speak and act irrationally. Jalen Rose was at that age when he had these thoughts concerning black Duke recruits. Those including Grant Hill who are judging the Fab Five for an admitted adolescent emotion twenty years after the fact should get down from their moral high horses and realize that they too most likely had similarly immature feelings in their own pasts.
The most viewed documentary in ESPN history also received mostly favorable reviews because it was unfiltered. The two-hour special did not shy away from the extremes, ranging from rabid fan support to the racist and threatening letters from Michigan alumni toward Fab Five members, and from the highs of Final Four wins to the lows of championship losses. The producers - among them Rose, who served as executive producer - also highlighted the scandals and embarrassments. They included the infamous Chris Webber timeout call and the Ed Martin booster violations. Yet some viewers were most shocked and offended when Fab Five members truthfully recalled their feelings at the time.
Yet commentators like Dick Vitale and Bill Walton are escaping from the documentary unscathed. Vitale once ridiculed the Michigan team for "the black shoes" and "the ugly black socks" which the documentary marked as symbols against mainstream basketball. By doing this, Vitale indirectly criticized the inner-city culture that the Fab Five represented. These words are as insulting to the Fab Five as Rose's comments were to Duke, the difference being that Vitale was a grown man and a paid commentator but is not being held responsible for his words.
During the Fab Five's reign, Bill Walton also claimed, "This is one of the most overrated and underachieving teams of all-time." This was in regards to a group of freshman that climbed all the way to the national championship game and that would go on to repeat the feat their sophomore year. Walton not only slammed the basketball program, but his comments had clear social and racial undertones to them. He disapproved of the non-mainstream, flashy playground style of play that the Fab Five brought to the college game. Like Vitale, Walton was a grown man and was paid to say these comments, but twenty years later he has come out smelling like roses.
The beauty of the Fab Five was their bond in spite of the negativity from people like Vitale, Walton and the Michigan alumni. They used the criticism as fuel for their play. They accepted and embraced their status as social and basketball outcasts and they reversed their image from being unwanted to being replicated. Most importantly, they survived and thrived because their "us versus the world" attitude allowed them to turn overwhelming adversity into unquestionable success.
Instead of emulating the Fab Five and their attitude toward unfounded criticism, Hill responded with sophomoric rhetoric on the Internet. He stooped to the level of a 17-year-old Jalen Rose. Rather than just keeping his immature thoughts to himself, Hill used his platform as an NBA veteran and his image as an honorable person to simultaneously belittle members of the Fab Five while elevating his own stature. He calls the Uncle Tom comments in the documentary "sad" and "pathetic" while using five dollar words as evidence of his superior private school education.
Many people have been quick to kneel and bow at the feet of Grant Hill, praising him for taking the high road while he uses the Fab Five's backs to climb onto his pedestal. Most of these same people feel that Jalen Rose's comments were made out of jealousy. Yet the legacy of the Fab Five will outlive that of the 1992 or 1993 Duke teams. Black shoes, black socks, baggy shorts, trash talking and playground swagger will be an integral part of basketball for years to come, something not even back-to-back Christian Laettner-led NCAA titles can ever measure up to.
Hung Vu's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at h.vu@cavalierdaily.com.
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