Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Jimmy King. Probably the coolest starting five in college basketball history. They helped usher in a new era of college basketball, full of swagger, highlight reel dunks, trash talking, and perhaps most importantly: uniforms that didn't fit like they were made for 7th graders. As an impressionable 9-year-old, this whole style of basketball was very appealing to me, and if I hadn't already fallen deeply in love with the Kansas Jayhawks, I would most likely be a Michigan fan right now due to this collection of 18-year-olds from 1991.
Unfortunately, they never quite fulfilled their seemingly limitless potential. They advanced to the national championship game their freshman year, setting a multitude of records along the way, only to get dismantled by a much more experienced Duke team. Their sophomore year, they again went all the way to the championship game, only to melt down in the final minutes, following their leader, Webber, who made one of the worst mental errors in sports history.
And sadly, that was all she wrote. Shortly afterwards, Webber left school early for the NBA Draft, Rose and Howard followed the year after that, and the Michigan basketball program fell into a slump that only recently has shown any signs of ending. A messy scandal involving Webber and others illegally receiving money from boosters has stripped the program of their Final Four banners, and the legacy of the Fab Five has been damaged beyond repair. In the NCAA record books, they hardly exist anymore, as many of their records have been officially removed follwing the scandal.
But yet they still live on, in the minds of all who enjoyed them during their glorious two-year heyday. In fact, just last week, I purchased a new pair of all-black basketball shoes, and the first thought in my head as I picked them off the shelf was "Nice. Fab Five style, baby."
And if you can't appreciate any of that, at least appreciate the fact that without them, there is a very real chance that us dudes would all still be wearing nut-huggers instead of loose-fitting shorts.
"Aight, boys, here's the play: I'll grab the rebound, blatantly travel while looking to make the outlet pass, get away with it, then dribble straight to the corner, get trapped, and call a timeout that we don't have and get T'd up for it. Sound good? Aight, hands in the middle, 1-2-3 DEFENSE!"
