Basketball fans love a good lineage story. We talk about the Currys, the Jameses, and the Waltons like they’re hoops royalty. But there is one father-son duo that holds a strange, almost haunting place in NBA history. I'm talking about Jimmy Walker and Jalen Rose.
On paper, they are one of the most successful pairs to ever play. Both were stars. Both scored over 10,000 career points in the league. Jimmy was a number one overall pick; Jalen was the engine of the most famous college team ever, the Fab Five. But here is the part that usually makes people stop mid-sentence: they never actually met. Not once.
Who was Jimmy Walker?
Before he was known as Jalen Rose’s father, Jimmy Walker was a flat-out legend. If you didn't see him play at Providence in the late 60s, you missed a scoring machine. He led the nation in scoring, dropping over 30 points a game. He was so good that the Detroit Pistons made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 1967 NBA Draft.
Funny enough, he was also the final pick in the NFL draft that same year—the original "Mr. Irrelevant"—despite never playing college football. That's the kind of athlete he was. In the pros, he was a two-time All-Star who played alongside Jerry West. He was smooth, he was talented, and by all accounts from his teammates, he was a "great guy to be around."
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But there was a shadow side. While Jimmy was living the NBA life, he had a son back in Detroit he didn't support.
Growing up in the shadow of a ghost
Jalen Rose didn't grow up in a mansion. Far from it. He grew up in a house in Detroit that sometimes didn't have heat or running water. His mother, Jeanne, was the one who held everything together. She actually named him "Jalen" by combining the names of his father (James) and his uncle (Leonard).
Imagine being a kid who is obsessed with basketball, and one day a teacher shows you a video of an NBA All-Star. The teacher says, "That's your dad." That is exactly how Jalen found out. He didn't get a phone call or a birthday card. He got a grainy highlight reel of a man who looked just like him, wearing a Pistons jersey, playing in the same city where Jalen was struggling to get by.
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Honestly, it’s kind of incredible Jalen didn't turn away from the game entirely. Instead, he leaned in. He used to carry a Jimmy Walker basketball card in his pocket for inspiration. He even wore No. 42 in high school—the reverse of his father's No. 24—just to stay motivated.
The phone calls that almost changed everything
For years, there was silence. Then, later in Jalen's career, a teammate named Austin Croshere (who also went to Providence) helped bridge the gap. Jalen finally got his father's number.
They started talking. Not about the past, really, but about life. They were building a bridge, albeit a late one. They eventually made a plan to meet in person in July 2007. After decades of being "the son of Jimmy Walker" without ever seeing the man, Jalen was finally going to look him in the eye.
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It never happened.
Jimmy Walker died of lung cancer on July 2, 2007. He was 63. The meeting they had scheduled for that month became a funeral that Jalen attended instead. Jalen has said he felt "selfishly disappointed" that they missed their window by just a few weeks. When he showed up to the funeral, he was shocked to find only about 20 people there. An NBA No. 1 pick, a two-time All-Star, and the room was nearly empty.
What this means for the rest of us
The story of Jimmy Walker and Jalen Rose is a reminder that success doesn't always look like a Hallmark movie. You can inherit someone's talent, their height, and their jumper without ever inheriting their presence. Jalen chose to be thankful for the "DNA" of the game while breaking the cycle of abandonment with his own children.
If you’re looking for a takeaway from this weird, tragic, and impressive family history, it's basically this:
- Acknowledge the talent, but own your path. Jalen didn't need Jimmy to become a star, but he used the knowledge of his father's talent to fuel his own confidence.
- Don't wait to make the call. If there’s a bridge you’re trying to build, do it now. July 2007 proved that sometimes "next month" is too late.
- Forgiveness is for you, not them. Jalen attended the funeral not because his father earned it, but because Jalen needed the closure to move forward.
If you want to see the physical resemblance and the similarities in their game, look up some old 1970s Pistons highlights of Jimmy and compare them to Jalen's 2000 Pacers run. The footwork is identical. It’s a powerful lesson in how we carry our parents with us, whether we want to or not.
Practical Steps to Learn More
- Watch the "Fab Five" documentary: It gives the best context on Jalen's upbringing in Detroit and how the lack of a father shaped that entire team's "us against the world" mentality.
- Read "Got to Give the People What They Want": This is Jalen's book where he goes into detail about the phone calls with Jimmy and the emotions of the funeral.
- Check the stats: Go to Basketball-Reference and look at their career arcs. They both finished with remarkably similar scoring outputs, proving that the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree—even if the tree is 2,000 miles away.