We sometimes forget that although we're quick to put college athletes on superstar pedestals, they're still college kids. And of course, he was a superstar - as big a college superstar as there had ever been at that time on a team that had quickly attained superstar status, which even the most talented championship teams in subsequent years have failed to achieve. Russell's interview was less about basketball than the role of the black athlete in society, for which Webber was at once a glaring example of NCAA hypocrisy as a member of the Fab Five, the media's tendency to cast black athletes in a rather limited light, a signifier of the street ball game coming face-to-face with the "purity" of Indiana basketball and the tension of being young, black, gifted and middle class in a society that was still trying to understand its own decadent history of race relations.
Jalen Rose Interviews Chris Webber Part on the Best Damn Sports Show Period (via JalenTV) While Robinson's contract was the most lucrative rookie contract ever on a yearly basis, Webber's 1993 contract with the Golden State Warriors was longer and included a clause that gave him far more power as a superstar rookie: an opt-out clause after his first season. Of course, the rookie salary cap that Russell mentioned eventually came to fruition: by the time Webber would have graduated, the NBA established a rookie salary cap after fellow Big Ten alumnus Glenn Robinson signed a 10-year, $68 million rookie contract with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1994. I don't want to make the minimum in the league so that will definitely come into effect.
It's a big difference between 100 dollars and 2 dollars. Or maybe it was just a matter of simple math, as Webber succinctly described with his trademark smile. Not to be deterred by Webber's somewhat evasive answer about going pro, Russell asked about what would factor into his decision and noted the looming possibility of a NBA rookie salary cap, a point that was hardly lost on Webber - he was clearly aware of the value of his budding superstar brand, if not due to his experience with how the University of Michigan had made money off his success then simply because he was an "articulate, bright young man" - as Russell put it - in contrast to the brash bad guy reputation that he had gained from his on-court demeanor.
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As he would say often in later interviews, he was still just enjoying life as a college kid and doing things that many of us would find familiar from our own college days in the midst of "the best time of his life", Webber wasn't committed to making the leap to the NBA just yet, citing the difference between being a student athlete and professional athlete as a primary reason around the 17:00 minute mark of the DBJ video. In March 1993, a young Chris Webber sat on the set of Detroit Black Journal for an interview with Cliff Russell ( video), then an analyst/commentator for Michigan Wolverines basketball.Īt that point, Webber was still just a sophomore untainted by the infamous timeout and later controversy that led to Michigan having to forfeit all of the Fab Five's wins.
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