Before he became a force of nature on the hardwood, Ben Wallace experienced working on cotton fields in the sweltering backwoods of Alabama.
Wallace grew up in White Hall, a small town named after a plantation in the state’s ninth-poorest county (Lowndes County) with a current population of fewer than 750 people and a poverty rate of 37%. It was a place where he and his family—Wallace is the 10th of 11 children—depended on neighbors to make it.
“I saw a lot of things. I witnessed the plantation, I went to it, I worked on it. I experienced a lot of things that made growing up in the South priceless,” Wallace says.
“One or two wrong turns where I’m from could put you on a path that’s hard to reverse. … We had to stick together to get through down South.”
Wallace recalls one day that helped set his course. He was sitting on the couch inside his mother’s house when his oldest brother—James McBride Sr.—pulled up outside in his car with a pile of basketball uniforms he had purchased from a thrift store. The jersey read “Eastern Exchange” on the front of it. “The name on the jersey had nothing to do with my school’s mascot or anything that I knew,” Wallace says with a laugh. McBride told his little brother he was going to put together a makeshift team to play against others in the community.
At the time, Wallace was not into basketball, but he wanted a jersey, and he wanted to play with his brothers.
“With me being the youngest, they looked at me like I was the weak link … like I was supposed to just chase rebounds or something,” he says.
Wallace, who is known for his quiet demeanor, let his play speak for itself. Not only did he begin to dominate his brothers, but he started on an unexpected basketball journey—one that will be honored this weekend when he is inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
It’s something Wallace never could have imagined growing up.
“When I became king on the court against my brothers, they stopped playing with me,” Wallace says. “When I started to learn the game, play the game and appreciate the game, I knew I had a chance to be good at it.
“But the Naismith Hall of Fame, that’s not something you prepare for. That’s taboo. You don’t go to the playground saying, ‘I’m going to be a Hall of Famer.’ It was the furthest thing from my mind.”