Today is the birthday of NBA champion, 4 x All-Star and 4 x Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace. Me and a friend were discussing his very successful and surprising career and it was only a matter of time until we went back in time to 1997, when a 19-year-old Kobe Bryant posterized an unknown Big Ben during a preseason game after crossing his Bullets' teammate Jimmy Oliver.

My?friend pulls up a crappy quality copy of the dunk on YouTube and I tell him a story about?me and my college roommates (shout out to Emmy Award-winning Ryan Young on CNN) all jumping off a couch at the same time when we saw the dunk back in 97. I then told him about Kobe's second half ankle-breaking move that led to a pretty wide open dunk because Ben didn't want anything to do with Kobe after that first half dunk. I can see it in his eyes he thinks I'm making this up and wants proof from 18 years ago.

I dig in my closet for the VHS tape labeled '97 Lakers' and find the very first time this dunk was shown on ESPN Sportscenter and there it was: Kobe crossing Jimmy Oliver and then introducing himself to Ben Wallace in the first half and Kobe once again making Jimmy Oliver look bad by making him do a split before throwing down a baseline dunk that had the late great Chick Hearn and the Lakers bench celebrating.

The video clip was an in-game update but if you actually care who won the game, the Lakers did 123-121 in OT.

Even at 19 years old, Kobe never showed his opponents any mercy #BestOfLakersWizards pic.twitter.com/82lRqFDxH9

— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) March 28, 2020

Maybe the best thing to come from that dunk was it motivated Ben to become the beast he became.

"Without that dunk, I don't know if I'm the player that I am today," Ben said to Rick Kamla "After that, I told myself 'Ben, that's never gonna happen again'. And you know what? It didn't."

(VIDEO: Check out Ben Wallace's dunk before getting dunked on + a rare alternate angle of the infamous dunk)

The Greatest Undrafted NBA Player Ever! pic.twitter.com/jeznuIjoqV

— David Astramskas (@redapples) September 10, 2023

BONUS VIDEO

The post Kobe's Famous Dunk on Ben Wallace + The Same Game Dunk Nobody Remembers appeared first on www.ebooksnet.com.

The name Ben Wallace doesn't get mentioned much anymore but a couple of days ago on The Starters, they were discussing the "Best Undersized Players of All-Time" and Big Ben had a few name drops.  It was good hearing about that overachieving NBA champion but today we get some not so great news about the 4 time NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

Via CBS6 WTVR.com

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) – Former NBA and Virginia Union University basketball star Ben Wallace entered a plea of no contest after he was arrested Tuesday for leaving the scene of a February car crash.

Wallace received a one year jail sentence.

The Henrico County judge suspended all but two days of the sentence. Wallace started serving his two day sentence Tuesday.

Last month a SUV registered to Wallace slammed into a fence outside a home off Gaskins Rd. and Peppertree Dr. in Henrico’s West End.

“It was dark, but it’s clear from here I saw one person trying to fight to get out of the car,” homeowner Silverio Acosta said in an interview last month. Once the man got out of the SUV, Acosta said he saw the man pick up and smash pieces of wood against the fence “because he was angry.”

The post 4 x NBA Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace sentenced to a year in jail (serves 2 days) appeared first on www.ebooksnet.com.

Is this the best championship team without a superstar ever?

The post Epic Photo of the Day: Best Team Without a Superstar? appeared first on www.ebooksnet.com.