Nearly an hour after a recent game, Pistons forward Ben Wallace, the mammoth NBA Defensive Player of the Year trophy dangling from his hand like a six-pack, turned a corner on his way out of the empty Palace and ran smack into a mob of fans still waiting for him. As Wallace advanced, a teenager wearing a brand new T-shirt with a giant, red R -- for rebound -- on the front, yelled out, “Ben, that trophy’s all wrong! The little metal guy on top needs a ’fro!” One middle-aged woman sported the Ben Wallace two-foot mushroom cloud wig that threatens to overtake the concession stands at the Palace these days. Next to her, a little girl in pigtails jumped up and down holding a big sign: “I love you BIG BEN!”

So does everybody in Detroit these days.

The Palace may be Stack’s house but Wallace, 27, is becoming a cult figure in Motown on the level of former Tiger phenom pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Each time Wallace tears down another board at home, a roving Piston rep hands out an “R” T-shirt to a lucky fan. The only problem is they can’t print the darn things fast enough. This season, the soft-spoken Wallace, a 6'9", 240-pound irresistible force who went undrafted out of D2 Virginia Union in 1996, joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton and Hakeem Olajuwon as the only players to lead the league in blocks (3.48) and rebounds (13.0) per game. To no one’s great surprise, he swept DPY honors with the highest percentage of votes (116 out of 120) in the 20-year history of the trophy.

“I’m really at a loss for words to explain all this,” he says, fiddling with the three-inch, diamond-crusted replica of London’s Big Ben hanging from his neck.

Actually, it’s easy. The 10th of 11 children growing up in White Hall, Ala., Wallace learned from an early age that the only way to stay on the court with his brothers was to master the dirty work inside. Shoot too much and you get a slap upside the head. So he developed his ferocious rebounding and relentless defense as a matter of survival -- something working stiffs in Detroit can relate to. “A lot of guys in the NBA have Afros,” says Detroit teammate Michael Curry. “With Ben, it ain’t the hair that people love -- it’s the heart.”

This article appears in the May 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine.