Ben Wilson (basketball)

Born in 1967 to Ben Wilson Sr. and Mary Wilson (née Gunter), Wilson was raised in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Wilson began playing basketball in elementary school. He started at St. Dorothy School and transferred to Ruggles Elementary School, graduating in 1981. Wilson practiced at Cole Park in Chatham and participated in summer league games in Chicago. As his game developed, friends and family surrounding Wilson began to notice that his talent could make him one of the best players in the sport. They made it a point to protect Wilson from trouble as he got older. As he was entering high school, the nationwide crack epidemic was in full swing. Chicago's violent crime rate was very high during this time as well, especially on the South Side. == High school career ==

In the fall of 1981, Wilson began his freshman year at Simeon. During the 1982–83 season, he was the only sophomore on the varsity basketball team. For the 1983–84 season, Simeon advanced to the Illinois AA State Championship, which was held at Assembly Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Behind Wilson, Simeon defeated West Aurora High School by nine points in the semifinals and beat top-ranked Evanston Township High School to win their first ever state title. Wilson was described as "Magic Johnson with a jump shot" by his Simeon coach, Bob Hambric. Athletes For Better Education (AFBE) In July 1984, Wilson attended the invitation-only Athletes For Better Education camp in Princeton, New Jersey. The camp allowed scouts and coaches to watch top high school students in a single location. After the week-long event, Wilson was ranked the number-one high school player in America. As his senior season approached, it was believed that Wilson was considering scholarship offers from the University of Illinois, DePaul University and Indiana University. == Death ==

Background On Tuesday, November 20, 1984, Wilson decided against lunching with teammates as he wanted to talk to his girlfriend, Jetun Rush, with whom he had been having significant issues. The couple had conceived a child early in 1984, a son named Brandon, and Rush would neither speak to Wilson nor let him see his child. Meanwhile, Calumet High School student Billy Moore was outside Simeon's campus with a .22 caliber revolver, looking to avenge his cousin, who had been allegedly robbed of $10 by a Simeon student. After finding out the conflict had been resolved, Moore and his friend Omar Dixon decided to stay nearby. Eventually the two followed Moore's friend Erica Murphy to a nearby luncheonette located on South Vincennes Avenue, just up the street from Simeon. The shooting Billy Moore, in the ESPN documentary about Ben Wilson, described what happened next. He and Omar Dixon were outside the luncheonette when Wilson and Rush came up the street behind them. Rush was trying to break away from Wilson, who in his desperation to speak to her, failed to pay attention to where he was going and bumped into Moore. Moore called to Wilson to watch where he was going, and Wilson responded by turning around and heading back toward Moore. The two engaged in a loud argument, with an infuriated Wilson and Moore exchanging expletives. During the argument, Moore drew the pistol he had been carrying. Wilson taunted him and dared him to shoot. Moore later said he felt that the much larger Wilson was just "punking" him. Wilson then lunged at Moore, who responded by firing two shots at him. The first struck Wilson in his groin while the second struck him in his abdomen, and caused significant internal bleeding. The Wilson family's lawsuit against the hospital for what they felt was inappropriate delay of medical care Dixon was released on parole in 2000, and Moore in 2005. Dixon later began yet another unrelated sentence for armed robbery, although Moore, interviewed in the 2012 documentary Benji, attempted to claim that his own confession was coerced. Wilson died on the same day that Simeon was to open its season. The team chose to play the game, a rematch with Evanston, and won. == Personal life ==

Wilson had one son, Brandon Sherrod Wilson, born September 1984, with his high school girlfriend Jetun Rush. Brandon, who was 10 weeks old when his father died, went on to play basketball at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, wearing Wilson's number 25. He played professionally with the Long Island Wizards and later became a coach. He also attended and graduated from the Nassau Police Academy, serving in the Port Washington Police Department for five years. On January 13, 2022, Brandon died in a car accident after swerving into a shoulder on the Northern State Parkway and hitting a pole and two trees. == Legacy ==

Wilson's friend and Simeon teammate, former NBA and University of Illinois basketball player Nick Anderson, wore jersey number 25 during his career in Wilson's honor. ESPN premiered a documentary on Wilson titled Benji on October 23, 2012. ==See also==