good bye chris webber

fuck what you heard. forget the taste in your mouth that the last 5 or so years of chris webber's career has left. this man, along with the rest of michigan's fab five have influenced you more than you might know. bald heads, baggy shorts, black socks with the black nike sneakers, and the attitude. young, fresh, brash, shit talking mother fuckers.  

do you remember in "dogtown and z-boys" when the zephyr skate team rolled to that competition and destroyed everybody's perception of skating? thats what c-webb and the fab 5 did to college basketball.  fast forward a couple years and the new york knicks are illing in the nba finals with black socks and black sneakers.  charles oakley, anthony mason (plus "in god's hands"), and derek harper were bald. 

the nike michigan basketball jerseys were squash city back then.  the yellow jersey: ooooh boy. how hard was that? these boys did so much for nike in the sense that they helped solidify nike's place in the mind's of hoop fans who were more in tuned to hip hop then religiously following the game (eventho as a pro, soon after the release of his own nike sneaker, webber left nike because he felt uncomfortable with the high price of his shoe).  they made the casual hoops fan into a passionate lover or hater of michigan ball. 

c-webb was the poster child for the "gen-x" athlete.  although his teams in both college and the pros reached two "final fours" and he is one of only six players to average 20 points/9 rebounds/ 4 assists for his career (wilt, elgin baylor, bird, billy cunningham, and KG), the stigma left on his career has been that he has been more style than stubstance. however, maybe in chris webber's case, style has been the more important part of his career because, culturally, webber (along with the rest of the fab 5) left an undyng influence on mainstream culture.  don't forget sucka.