Ben Wilson and the legend of the number 25

Have you ever heard the wonderful sentence "Oh, he's the Magic Johnson with a jump shot!" on a basketball court? In 1984 that one is ideologically tattooed for the first time on the skin of a South Side Chicago boy.
In the summer of 1983, after having spent all of his junior years on the bench sand and having grown 20 cm in a few months, he's introduced to the first training session of the Simeon Career Academy: his name is Benjamin “Ben” Wilson Jr, said Benji. He enters in the starting five and his movements with his visions are absurd; the coach moves him in the role of center and with the jersey number 25, among thousand of emotions, he lead the school to its first historical title. 

Benji has a devastating and elegant game (in slang: "smooth") and he succeeds in entering the ABCD Camp of the "Guru" Sonny Vaccaro, the man who brought Jordan to sign with Nike. Today Sonny would still tell you that the strongest player that has ever be in the ABCD Camp was Benji Wilson. 

It seems like a marvelous world, everything goes in the correct direction but during the forenoon of a Game One, in his sophomore year, Benji faced the gun of Billy Moore, one of the "Gangster Disciples" brothers and the boy who start the signature "Magic johnson with the stop and shoot" collapsed to the ground.

A few years later, in 2004, with 18,5 points, 6,6 assist, 4,7 rebounds and 2,1 stolen per game, a boy from the Englewood area in Chicago with the nickname of "Poohdini" arrives at the same school. His name is Derrick Rose and he also wears the number 25. Today D-Rose has chosen again the number 25 for his rebirth with the New York Knicks, and you now know the reason for that choice.

The number 25 of the school have been withdrawn with a very touching ceremony but, according to the tradition from that day, the number 25 is "worn" by the strongest player of the team. The last to do it after Derrick Rose has been Jabari Parker, who played with the number 22 but had the 25 engraved on his Nikes. In this year draft, from LSU has been select Benjamin "Ben" Simmons. Too many coincidences: the name, the number 25 and then the moves, the talent.

Maybe the God of basketball gave us again the "Magic Johnson with to jump shot?"