THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502190174
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHAPEL HILL, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 142 lines
When she gave birth to her first two sons, Jackie Wallace had planned to become a Muslim. The first she named Malcolm, for Malcolm X. The second, two years later, was called Mohammed.
After the accidental death of the boys' father, whom she planned to marry, Jackie Wallace had another son by a new boyfriend. By then, though she had dropped the idea of a religious conversion, she was hopelessly boxed in by her prior choice of names.
``When I came along, it wouldn't have sounded right if I had a regular name, like Mark or something like that,'' says Rasheed Wallace, North Carolina's skillful sophomore center. ``It wouldn't have a ring to it.''
Oh, ``Rasheed Wallace'' rings plenty - through the grand expanse of the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, over the national cable on the heated wings of a Dick Vitale hyper-bleat, in the minds of NBA executives who labor to temper their fondness for the Tar Heels' precocious No. 30, who might be the top draft pick in June if he chooses to leave school.
He is a 6-foot-10 20-year-old from Philadelphia who is well aware of his potential place in that city's basketball heritage, but who had to leave to proceed along that storied path.
He has met most of the Philly legends - Wilt Chamberlain, Ray ``Chink'' Scott, Wali Jones, Walt Hazzard and others. But Wallace turned down Villanova, turned down Temple, and not only because coach Dean Smith turned up in his North Philadelphia living room the day after North Carolina beat Michigan for the NCAA championship in 1993.
The sights and sounds of his neighborhood in Philadelphia's Germantown section helped drive him south, too.
Wallace was a special talent at an early age, and his brothers, by establishing a presence before him, ran interference through Rasheed's adolescence. All that gave Wallace a sort of special dispensation.
``All the drug dealers would sell their drugs maybe on one end of the block or in a little section, and we could play and have fun in another section,'' he says. ``I lived across the street from my elementary school, and in the schoolyard we could always go play there and know we were safe.''
Yet even the innocent are not immune to the chaos, the questionable character, the danger that can mar today's urban landscape. So Wallace brought his exuberant, child-like personality to tranquil Chapel Hill - which ironically was devastated by two deaths to random gunfire on a downtown street last month.
There he has meshed with the all-business, adult carriage of fellow star sophomore Jerry Stackhouse to create a pretty picture of a national powerhouse. Where Stackhouse smolders with a steely competitiveness, Wallace injects the Tar Heels with a wide-eyed, open-mouthed, borderline punkish flamboyance that North Carolina teams rarely feature.
Along the lines of two of his favorite athletes, Charles Barkley and Andre Agassi, Wallace woofs - though that brashness appears less designed to humiliate opponents than to celebrate the sparkling play of himself and his teammates.
And like many talented big men who suffer the frustration of collapsing defenses, Wallace is prone to react with pointed elbows or to suggest, to a referee's face, that perhaps the man is looking but he's not seeing.
This results in the occasional technical foul. Wallace has garnered four Ts this season, and he seems to walk a finer emotional line than most players.
``Whatever gets him going, gets him playing well, it's good for him to do it,'' Stackhouse says. ``I think sometimes it takes away from his game when he gets down on himself or when he feels like the refs are against him. But for the most part he's gotten a lot better controlling that situation. Once he controls it to the fullest, there's gonna be some real good things happening for the whole team.''
Says senior guard Donald Williams: ``That's how he grew up playing, that's how he is. You can't change him. It's not to the point where he's embarrassing himself or the program. It's OK with coach Smith as long as he's not embarrassing anyone.''
From a physical standpoint - the scoring, rebounding and shot-blocking basics - the idea that Wallace will embarrass them is the least of the Tar Heels' concerns. He averages 18.2 points, 8.5 rebounds and three blocks a game, and leads the ACC in field goal percentage (67.1).
Combined with Stackhouse's 19 points per game and Williams' 15, the Tar Heels - 20-2 and second-ranked nationally entering today's game at Virginia - boast an enviable front-to-back balance that makes them solid NCAA contenders, despite their much-discussed lack of depth.
Wallace, after a season of playing behind Eric Montross, stands at the brink of college dominance and professional multimillions thanks to a disciplined effort of family and friends to direct him there.
A star since his freshman year at Simon Gratz High School, Wallace went on to become USA Today's player of the year as a senior and the country's most sought-after prospect.
The crazed recruiting process was orchestrated by a small circle of advisers - his mother, his first recreation league coach and his high school coach - all of whom had read the book ``Raw Recruits'' to gird themselves for the sleaziness that might come at them.
Wallace stayed above board, not only in choosing a college but in the preceding formative years, despite the absence of a father and presence of daunting, familiar forces.
``I'd say around 12 or 13, I knew a couple guys who got shot, a couple who were on the run, some went to jail,'' Wallace says. ``That's when I said to myself, `Is this the life I want to live, being on the run from somebody? Or going to jail for something silly like selling drugs or maybe shooting somebody?' My brothers told me to get that out of my head right away. That's when I really started playing organized basketball.''
Wallace fostered an interest in architecture and sketching at Simon Gratz. Not a great student - he reportedly carries a C average in college - Wallace still paid attention while many in his high school classes did not.
No, Wallace knew what he needed to do. He also knew early that he and his mom would be the team. His father, Sam Tabb, who still lives in Philadelphia, rarely came around.
``Growing up raising three boys on your own is either gonna make you strong or make you crazy,'' says Wallace, whose mother now lives in Durham and works for the North Carolina department of social services. ``It definitely made my mom strong.''
He is lukewarm about his relationship with his father.
``I wouldn't say it's to the point where I hate him or nothing like that because he's not with my mom or he wasn't there when I was growing up,'' Wallace says. ``He's my father whether I like it or not - he helped give me life. So I still love him and everything. Sometimes I wished he was with me, and other times I didn't.''
What will never leave Wallace is fan and media scrutiny. The latest question, of course - aside from whether he is attending class, which he says he is - is his draft status this spring. Wallace says he plans to stay at North Carolina another year, but admits that could change depending upon his family's advice.
He clearly revels in the college environment, though, and describes himself as a fun-loving jokester, quick in meetings with quips that he claims have even loosened up Smith this season.
``He kind of gets a bad rap for his on-the-court antics, `That Rasheed, he's wild,' and all that,'' Stackhouse says. ``He's really not like that. To a certain extent, he's kind of shy in public. People really don't know that. It's just that once he's on the court, he wants to win and he'll do anything for us to win. A lot of guys on this team feel that way, we just have different channels in the way we go about it.''
Wallace's way is out there, emotion on the sleeve, humming to the excitable beat of a rare life. Rasheed's life - which by any other name would still seem as sweet. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rasheed Wallace plays on an emotional edge for North Carolina,
occasionally close enough to earn a technical foul. He has four this
season.
by CNB