Wallace, Johnson making their marks on NBA season
Wallace at home in Detroit
Former Virginia Union and CIAA
standout Ben Wallace of the NBA's Detroit Pistons, won
the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year award for
the third time in four years Monday.
Wallace, who was presented with the award at
an afternoon news conference, joins Dikembe
Mutombo as the only two players to win the award three or
more times. Wallace also won it in 2002 and 2003.
Mutombo won in 1995, 1997, 1998 and 2001.
"I wish we could divide this up and give a piece to everybody," Wallace said of his teammates.
During the regular season, he ranked fifth in the NBA with 2.38 blocks per game, second with 12.2 rebounds a game and 23rd with 1.43 steals a game. The 6-foot-9, 240-pound Wallace ranks second in the playoffs with three blocks a game. The defending champion Pistons are up three games to one and tried to clinch their first-round series against Philadelphia when they hosted Game 5 against the 76ers on Tuesday.
Wallace received 45 first-place votes and a total of 339 points from a panel of 125 members of the media. San Antonio's Bruce Bowen was second with 247 points and Denver's Marcus Camby finished third with 168. Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers won the award last year.
Wallace's NBA career began as an undrafted free agent out of VUU during the 1996-97 season in Washington, where he stayed for three seasons before being traded to Orlando. When Grant Hill decided he was leaving Detroit after the 1999-2000 season, Detroit GM Joe Dumars traded him to the Magic and acquired Wallace and Chucky Atkins.
"Every successful franchise has an identity and cornerstone-type players, and Ben has set the identity here and he's the cornerstone of what we do," Dumars said. "We hang our hat on defense."
Wallace never will be known for his offense, but he did average a career-high 9.7 points and a career-high 2.1 assists this season and scored a career-high 29 points in Game 3 against Philadelphia.
Thanks to his blue-collar game, likable personality and ever-changing hairdo, Wallace is arguably the most popular athlete in Detroit.
"With the workman mentality that I have and the workman mentality that the city has, it was an easy fit for me," Wallace said. "A lot of guys play in this league for a number of years and they never really find a place to call home. I can definitely say Detroit has opened its door for me and accepted me as a son."
Johnson getting it done in Dallas
There were plenty of skeptics when former
Southern University standout and 19-year NBA
veteran Avery Johnson took over as the NBA's Dallas
Mavericks head coach from Don Nelson on March 19.
The 40-year old Johnson, unproven as a
coach despite his long tenure as a respected point guard in
the league, became a full-time assistant to Nelson this season with a
long-term goal of replacing Nelson as head coach. 
He got some early on-the-job training and mixed reviews when he replaced Nelson for 14 games earlier in the season when the veteran coach had some medical issues.
After taking over from Nelson on a full-time basis in March, the critics could still be heard even when Mavs' owner Mark Cuban ended speculation about his status by giving Johnson a four-year contract at a reported $2.5 million a year. It didn't even stop them when the Mavs finished the regular season 14-2 under Johnson's guidance.
And they really stepped up the noise when the Mavericks opened their best-of-seven-game Western Conference playoff series against Houston with two losses at home in Dallas.
All's quiet now, however, as Johnson's squad swept two games at Houston to square the series and then won Monday's game back in Dallas to take a 3-2 series lead. All of a sudden, it appears Johnson has inherited Nelson's genius. Or perhaps the credit is just due to the players. The coach is only relevant when there's blame to be handed out.
Regardless of the spin, Johnson has at least proven that he has benefitted from the wars he's been involved in, which include winning an NBA title while with the San Antonio Spurs in 1998-99.
© 2005 Azeez Communications, Inc.