Detroit – The two most divisive words in the NBA? Rasheed Wallace. He is basketball’s angry young dude.
Everyone in the game calls him ‘Sheed. Sometimes, it sounds like a curse.
Detroit teammates love ‘Sheed. Referees hate ‘Sheed.
Nobody completely understands ‘Sheed. Not even his mother.
“That boy is crazy,” Jackie Wallace said Wednesday, grabbing my elbow with maternal tenderness. “People think he’s Prozac crazy. But he’s my baby.”
Wallace studies Malcolm X and scares suburban America. The black-and-white line where races split on love for the NBA is this crazy ‘Sheed. Nobody makes the Pistons laugh louder. Nobody makes the defending champs tougher to like. Nobody in hoops is harder to figure out.
That’s why I needed to find his mother, in the hope of discovering why ‘Sheed seems bent on being his own worst enemy.
“I wish I had some kind of hookup, a listening device that would let me, and only me, hear everything he said and did on the court,” said Jackie Wallace, who could be found Wednesday at an elementary school in a crumbling corner of Detroit, where the league opened a new reading center. “If I could communicate with my son during games, when he loses his temper, I could tell him, ‘Rasheed, just be quiet. Shut up and play.’ He does listen to me. But not on that subject.”
Wallace is a 6-foot-11, 230- pound M&M. He’s sweet as milk chocolate on the inside. From the cheap seats, however, all we can see is a hard outer shell.
That’s his own fault. Wallace seems to take perverse pleasure in antagonizing the media that shapes his national reputation. It’s a feud, his mother explained, that ‘Sheed has refused to let die since reading embarrassing details of his personal life when he was in college at North Carolina.
But know why Wallace wears No. 36? It’s to honor Malcolm, an elder brother who keeled over from a heart attack on July 5, 2003. He died at age 36.
The number for which America recognizes ‘Sheed is 41. That’s his NBA regular-season record for technical fouls. He led the league again with 27 technicals this season, then was fined $20,000 for criticizing referees during the Eastern Conference finals.
“You know when I’m worried about Rasheed? When he’s not talking to the officials,” Detroit center Ben Wallace said.
When returning in March to play against Portland, his former team, ‘Sheed made certain to buff the jewels in that championship ring won a year ago. Wallace said he wanted to wave his success in the face “of all those people who said I was a cancer.”
To a man, the Pistons swear ‘Sheed was the locker room antidote to any tension Detroit felt before its 96-79 victory in Game 3, a must-win that turned what had been a depressingly lopsided series against San Antonio back into a down-and- dirty street fight.
While Wallace will pump his chest to rile the crowd in introductions, he hates to seize control of a Detroit offense that desperately needs his deft touch.
“He might score three baskets in the first quarter and then not show up the rest of the night,” Pistons assistant Gar Heard said. “I don’t think you could ever design an offense where you said, ‘OK, Rasheed, we’re going to throw you the ball 20 times a game.’ Why? He wouldn’t do it. He doesn’t have the ego to do it.”
‘Sheed never has been comfortable being the biggest person in the room. Not in high school, said his mother. Not now, in the NBA. Probably not ever.
“I’m not trying to be a great scorer of the game,” Wallace said. “Great scorers were Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar), Mike (Jordan), Larry Bird. They were great scorers. But I’m not out to be a scorer in this game.”
The most complicated piece to Detroit’s championship puzzle is ‘Sheed.
His mother describes him as a “mama’s boy, spoiled with love.” His teammates describe the 30-year-old veteran as a comedian who can be as gut-busting funny as Dave Chappelle. His detractors describe Wallace in profane terms unfit for print.
“Personally,” Wallace said, defensive anger casting a shadow on his every word, “it doesn’t matter to me if I had the worst career stats in NBA history, as long as I got my ‘ships.”
‘Ships? That’s championships. A ring needs no explanation.
“The ‘ships,” Wallace said, “it shuts everything up.”
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
