Ben Camey Wallace (born September 10, 1974) is an American basketball player. He currently plays in the National Basketball Association with the Detroit Pistons. Nicknamed "Big Ben",
he plays the center and power forward positions, and is listed at and . He has won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award four times, a record he shares with Dikembe Mutombo. Wallace was a member of the Detroit Pistons team that won the NBA championship in 2004.

Early life

Ben Wallace was born in in , a small town in Lowndes County, and is the tenth of eleven children. He later attended Central High School in Hayneville where he received all-state honors in basketball, baseball, and football (as a linebacker). Former basketball player Charles Oakley is Wallace's mentor, having discovered Wallace at a 1991 basketball camp, and later recommended Wallace to his previous college, Virginia Union.