By God’s Grace

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By God’s Grace

Hall of Fame Chris Webber shares memories of the time out, the Fab Five, life lessons and more in memoir,

With his first book and new memoir, By God’s Grace, Chris Webber, alumni of the historic “Fab Five” from the University of Michigan and the National Basketball Association, along with a lifetime’s worth of stories recalled eye-opening travels back to Mississippi, where his father was born.

Webber’s story begins in the cotton town of Tunica at a place once called the Abbey plantation. His dad, Mayce Webber Jr., described to his eldest son the one-bedroom shotgun house that had been his home: “Picture a shoebox,” he said. The little house was now gone, just a memory. The only thing that remained was the land itself. Where Webber’s father worked in the fields as a child, what had once been a patch of the Jim Crow south he’d only heard stories about growing up. His father, he knew, had been fortunate to be able to leave long ago and start a life in Michigan. “I have never admired or respected a man as much as I admire and respect my father,” Chris Webber, whose full name is Mayce Edward Christopher Webber III, writes about the man he is named after. “I’ve always had a sense of strength, but I never fully appreciated my source. After hearing his stories repeatedly at family reunions and dinners or in our private conversations over the years, I thought I knew the man inside and out. Then, while writing this book, I researched his life and started to fully grasp all he’s been through.”

She’s the definition of sacrifice. Through her example, I learned to balance sensitivity, and strength.

Only after visiting Mississippi could Webber really understand why his dad wept and picked him up in a bear hug at the 1993 NBA Draft, when he was selected out of the University of Michigan as the number one overall pick. Or why it resonated so emotionally when the first thing he did when he got an NBA paycheck was buy his dad, who’d worked the night shift on the assembly line at a GM plant for years, a new Cadillac. Part of the book “is my father’s journey,” he says. “I hope he feels the reward for it. There’s no way I could’ve done what he did with five kids.” Chris Webber is now 50, inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021 and widely considered one of the greatest NBA players of all time. He was also the face of a college basketball team that revolutionized the sport, and influenced the style of an entire decade—the Fab Five. When he was just 13 years old and playing basketball at Country Day High in Detroit, he was the most sought-after basketball player in the America, the world on his shoulders. Before now Webber has never truly shared his own story, deeply from this perspective: His own. By God’s Grace took Webber nine years to research and write. He wanted to use the book to not only explore his own life and journey from within, but to document his family’s. One of its guiding principles is the idea of community: the people in Webber’s life who raised him, protected him, and helped him become a successful father and husband. The book is, of course, about his famous basketball career and the moments that shaped him, and his philanthropy and passion collecting of African American art and artifacts. But Webber devotes much to his family. His mother, a central figure in the idea of community, was the person who passed on her love of music and reading to him, one of his first memories being her humming into his ear as a child. Doris Johnson was a teacher who got her master’s in education and fought against segregation in Detroit schools.

He remembers she bought a telescope because she wanted the family to be able to see Halley’s Comet. It was the first telescope anyone had on Biltmore Street in west Detroit. “I remember learning about space and the whole neighborhood coming to look through the telescope, as if it held the secrets to the future,” he says. One of the greatest days of Webber’s life was years later, he says, when he made it to the NBA, he was able to buy her a new house. By God’s Grace is centered not only on deep research, but the notions of faith, and prayer. How taking time away from everything to pray, from when he was a young basketball prodigy keeping a journal with God to traveling in the NBA and trying to carve out some personal time for himself. “Prayer, for me, was like, breathing,” he says. Webber investigates his own amazing life and shares what he found, and the grace through which it all happened. “I wanted the chance to talk to people who supported me, to tell my side of the story,” he says. “I wanted people to understand how I grew up, to see where the work-ethic came from. I really hope the book exudes the message to enjoy as much of the journey as you can.”

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