FAYETTEVILLE — With Arkansas set to face Duke on Thanksgiving night in its first game ever inside Chicago’s fabled United Center, it’s only natural to think about some great Razorback basketball players from the Windy City.
Similar to nearby Memphis, Chicago has traditionally instilled an hard-nosed edge in its native basketball players. On the Duke side, the metro area has given rise to current head coach Jon Scheyer as well as former Blue Devil greats like Jabari Parker and Jahlil Okafor, the only “native” Arkansan to ever play for the Blue Devils:
On the Arkansas basketball side, standouts Darrell Walker (1981-83), Tony Brown* (1978-82), Byron Irvin (1984-86), Jannero Pargo (2000-02) and Patrick Beverley (2006-08) all went from Chicago playgrounds and gymnasiums to Arkansas to the NBA.
Current Razorback head coach John Calipari got two of his best college players and future NBA stars out of Chicago in Kentucky phenom Anthony Davis and Memphis star Derrick Rose. Calipari caught some flak last season when he took a trip to Chicago for Rose’s jersey retirement ceremony right after Arkansas got shellacked by Tennessee.
Rose grew up idolizing Michael Jordan, Chicago’s greatest pro basketball player ever. That happened to be Darrell Walker’s teammate on the 1993 Chicago Bulls that won the world championship. Nine years later, Jannero Pargo joined Walker as an NBA champion when he won a title with the Los Angeles Lakers and Jordan heir apparent Kobe Bryant.
Windy City, Small World
Both Pargo and Walker had started their college careers in junior college before heading to Fayetteville. Pargo had played a season at Westark Community College (now UA-Fort Smith), then played two years as Razorback while turning into an All-American before a decade in the NBA.
Currently the head coach at Little Rock, Walker also was NBA head coach for Toronto Raptors and the Washington Wizards, after growing up in the Lowden home projects on the South Side of Chicago.
“Everything was hardnosed,” Walker told Best of Arkansas Sports. “You went from park to park to play against some of the best players in the city. So if you didn’t win, you may sit out two or three games. So if you wanted to win, you had to be tough and you had to play.
“A lot of my toughness came from growing up in the neighborhood that I grew up. That’s the first thing – just to survive.”
Walker also went to play pick up games on the southside at Kennedy King Junior College on Saturdays where he was 15 years old and the competition was guys in their 30s, who didn’t want any slight fouls being called.
