Chris Webber and Jalen Rose, the biggest stars from the transcendent men’s college basketball squad dubbed the “Michigan Fab Five” in the early 1990s, have finally squashed their decades-long beef in an emotional TV tribute.
Webber, the former blue-chip, can’t-miss prospect who wowed fans in college and the pros, was informed he will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022. Rose, his former best friend from childhood who then became his enemy after the Fab Five was rocked by a collegiate scandal, congratulated Webber on Sunday, May 16, 2021.
For most basketball fans, that gesture on ABC’s “NBA Countdown” represented the thawing of icy relations between the two former high school All-Americans who became teammates in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Together, the Fab Five — who, in addition to Webber and Jalen Rose, included Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson — went on to become the first group of all-freshman starters to take their team to the national championship in 1992.
“I love you, my brother. Congratulations,” Rose told Webber while clasping both hands together and bowing. “You made it to the Hall of Fame. Well deserved.”
“Jalen Anthony Rose, it’s crazy, man,” Webber responded. “And thank God for your beautiful, wonderful mother ’cause you know what she did for me.”
Rose’s mother Jeanne succumbed to lung cancer in February 2021 at 79.
Rose said reconciliation began when former Fab Five teammate Juwan Howard became the head coach for the Wolverines men’s basketball team in 2019.
“It squashes any drama or any beef because we’re not going to bring that to Ann Arbor’s campus with Juwan Howard as our head coach,” Rose told the Detroit Free Press. “The one thing that we both know is his success turning around the University of Michigan is first and foremost about him and about the players that he’s going to influence. Then it’s about us being there to support him, not being drama, not being splintered, not giving any indication of dysfunction.”
Check out the emotional tribute below on the next page.
