Jaylen Ross father was the first NBA draft pick, but they never met in private

This article is compiled from Basketball Network by Shane Garry Acedera

In the NBA, it is rare for a player's father to be the draft No. 1 pick. According to unofficial statistics, only eight NBA players’ fathers can be called “high picks and outstanding strength.” Of these eight, former NBA star Jaylen Ross stands out, but his story is less inspiring.

Ross is the only player on this list with a different surname than his father. Of these eight, he is also the only player who did not have his father to accompany him when he was fighting in the NBA. To make matters worse, he never even had the chance to meet his father in person.

Not many people know that he has this experience because he admits that he chose not to talk about this when he was still playing in the NBA.

"I never mentioned my father, nor did I talk about the turmoil of childhood. My father was the No. 1 pick in the 1967 NBA Draft, but his son never met me, and I became such a guy. I used to carry his basketball card with me," Ross said recently in the Tamron Hall Show.

It was not until high school that Jaylen learned that his father was Jimmy Walker, the 1967 NCAA scoring champion who attended Providence College and was selected as the No. 1 pick by the Detroit Pistons in the NBA draft. He played in the league for nine seasons, traveled to three teams, was selected for the NBA All-Star roster twice, and scored 11,655 points in his career.

But Jimmy not only scored well on the basketball court, but his off-court output was also "excellent". In the interview, Ross said Walker had 13 children with 11 different women, and he was one of them.

At the end of his basketball career, Walker met Jaylen's mother, Jenny, at a nightclub in western Detroit. He was married at the time, but he did not inform him. The two had sex and Jenny became pregnant with Jaylen. But shortly after Jaylen was born, he completely disappeared from their lives.

Jenny, who was a typist at Chrysler at the time, said: "A year after Jaylen was born, I said to Jimmy, 'Even if you don't give me a penny, at least you should be a father and take care of your son.' But he can't even do this."

Jenny rarely talks to Jaylen about Jimmy, and in her words, "What's there to say?" At the same time, Jaylen heard some stories about his father being a basketball player. But he didn't know what level of ball his father played and what was his level. When he finally found out, he bought a Jimmy Walker basketball card and put it in his pocket for several reasons.

"I used this number to get inspiration and motivation, but to be honest, it was also out of grievance. He wore the 24th in high school, and I wore the 42th. I did wear it that way because I was thinking, 'One day he will know my name, one day I will stand out, one day he will regret not appearing in my life', so I had that spirit," Jaylen added.

Similarly, Jimmy didn't know that his abandoned son in Detroit was a very good basketball player. It wasn't until Jaylen was 15 that he knew his child was a probable star. Soon, Walker saw Rose become one of the legendary "Five Tigers" on TV. During March Madness, he wrote his cell phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Mitch Albom, a reporter for The Detroit Free Press, to hand it over to his son with the number and a handwritten letter.

Albom handed the letter to Jaylen when the Wolverines (University of Michigan Basketball Team) broke into the semifinals, but the latter didn’t open the letter until seven years later when he entered the NBA. He said he wanted to prepare himself before reading it. He also got his phone number and called Walker. They finally got into a chat and talked several times, but then they ended up in vain. Jaylen said they had planned to meet in July 2007, but Jimmy died of lung cancer on July 2.

According to Wikipedia, Walker was not only the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft that year, but also the No. 1 pick in the ABA League draft. The team that selected him was the Indiana Pacers (the ABA and the NBA had not yet merged, and 1967 was also the first year of the ABA's draft). He was even selected by the New Orleans Saints at the last pick in the NFL draft that year, even though he never played college level football. This also makes him the only athlete in history to be selected first in the A-field league (in Jimmy's case, he was selected by two basketball leagues at the same time), and the last player in the B-field league.