Two weeks ago, Ben Wallace left the Detroit Pistons, a team he has defined and been an integral part of for the last six years, and jumped ship to the Chicago Bulls. The apparent reason, and one that he tacitly acknowledged, was that the Bulls offered him a 60 million dollar contract while the Pistons had to cap it at 48 million. A player lured by the money and switching from a team that he seemed inseparably attached to is hardly an uncommon occurrence in sport, and especially in the NBA. Players lesser and greater than Wallace have done it through the ages. 

Six years with one team is a respectably long time, but not that long. It’s difficult to believe, but Allen Iverson will be in his eleventh year with the Philadelphia 76ers. John Stockton spent nineteen with the Utah Jazz. But from having been a journeyman before joining the Pistons, Wallace, in these six years, had become its face and its star with a certain lastingness that has become rare in sport. Maybe it was simply because he was the number one man on a hugely successful team, leading them to four straight conference finals, and in 2004, all the way to the title. Maybe it was because he was the kind of player he was, with the earthy, always aggressive, game that he has come to embody. Maybe, and this is more likely, it was because he has carried the mantle of defensive enforcer (along with, in recent years, players like Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley and Dennis Rodman) and also brought with the scrapping and the physicality a rare grace and beauty, a grace that has eluded even the best of those who chose this role. Defense became fun. Watching Ben Wallace play defense was fun. 

Wallace’s assertion that he had moved "to a contender" sounds specious. Apart from redundant. (He was playing for a much likelier contender than the current Bulls team - even with Wallace in it). The Pistons have the strongest core in the NBA - even better, much better, than current champion Miami Heat, and arguably better than the San Antonio Spurs. They are a team that consistently have a legitimate shot at winning the championship over the next few years. The Bulls, on the other hand, are the post-80s Liverpool FC of the NBA. A mostly wistful team for whom the success, which a certain Michael Jordan brought, came in such large doses that it kept them going for long after the tide had receded. The cast has moved on, and now they are one of many young teams that is looking for a repeat of their glory years. Fair enough, and I’m not discounting the possibility that the Bulls with a couple of similarly smart acquisitions over the next couple of years can taste success. Only that it is improbable that Wallace, at 31, is going to Chicago because of the "contender" that it is.  

With its traditional scoffing at the international arena, players in the NBA have but one goal: winning the title. They will give up money, accept a lesser role, sign an uncertain one-year contract, all just to give themselves a chance to win that elusive championship. Karl Malone gave it one last run by signing with the Los Angeles Lakers in his final season after seventeen great, win-less years in Utah. And when he spoke about how the move could help realize his boyhood dream of winning an NBA title, even hardened Jazz-haters found it in themselves to silently root for him. You’re 40 years old Karl. You deserve one. 

Big Ben, on the other hand, had got that one that had eluded many much greater than him. More relevantly, he was in a team that had everything in them to win two or three more.  

At heart, Ben Wallace is a people’s player, an everyman. He isn’t blessed with the more celebrated skills of a Magic Johnson’s sublime passing or a Kobe Bryant’s explosive shooting: players for whom points and assists, wins and glory, seem to have come easily. Wallace’s role as a defensive stopper ensured that every rebound he got his hands on was preceded by a pounding, every breathtaking shot block that sent the ball smack off his right hand deep into the stands was preceded by a bump at the knee and a nudge at the hip that were designed to impede his getting into the air. Offensive stars are afforded the luxury of a team building their strategy around that player. Every play that is called and screen that is set and substitution that is made is with a view of creating a path of least resistance for the team’s biggest scorer. Wallace, on his team, was the protagonist in creating this path, mucking about and battling it out. He went about a game of basketball in a way we could see ourselves go about work everyday. We celebrated his glare-downs at opponents and his fist pumps and his successes with a cheer louder than we gave others, because we thought he deserved it all the more. Often, defensive players are not given the credit they deserve. But on this Pistons team, he was the superstar, inspite of an all-round star cast that constantly challenged that. Ben Wallace seemed to have had it all in Detroit. 

We look up to these men and women because in our minds, they represent us by becoming the sportsmen and women that we all dreamed of becoming. We want to think that they’re "better" than the rest of us in our nine to five jobs driven by our paycheck at the end of the month. The fact is, inspite of their mighty gifts and their grand ambitions, they’re driven by many of the same things too. But when they act upon this, which can sometimes mean acting purely on "business" considerations, why is there a feeling of disappointment? 

This was Wallace’s chance to cement his legacy in the heart of a team and a city that adored him. The warm roar that was accorded to him almost every time he touched the ball was… special. Such spontaneous affection is given to surprisingly few. I can’t think of too many after Jordan who heard this kind of love on a game-by-game basis. This could have been his way of giving back. Achievement on a sports field is worshipped, but loyalty even more, and precisely because it’s in such short supply. Ben Wallace could have been the greatest one-team defensive basketballer since Bill Russell for the Boston Celtics of the 60s.  Instead, he becomes just another one of the flood of sportsmen who will push everything else to the backseat if the price is right.