Ben Wilson

Wilson's friend and Simeon teammate, former NBA and University of Illinois basketball player Nick Anderson, wore jersey number 25 during his career in Wilson's honor. Juwan Howard wore 25 at the University of Michigan as a tribute to Wilson. Former Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose, who graduated from Simeon in 2007, wore number 25, and the team won the state championship in 2006 and 2007. He also wore number 25 with the New York Knicks, after being traded. Simeon basketball player Jabari Parker had the number 25 stitched into the team sneakers during his time at Simeon. Following Nick Anderson's tribute to Wilson in wearing number 25 at Illinois, many others who graduated from Simeon and moved on to play for the Illini have carried on the tradition of wearing the jersey number 25. In the years since his murder in 1984, Deon Thomas, Bryant Notree, Calvin Brock, and Kendrick Nunn have all worn 25 during their basketball career at Illinois to honor Wilson. ESPN premiered a documentary on Wilson titled Benji on October 23, 2012.

The Wilson family's lawsuit against the hospital for inappropriate delay of medical care was settled in 1992 for an undisclosed amount. Dixon was released on parole in 2000, and Moore in 2005. Dixon later began an unrelated sentence for armed robbery, although Moore, interviewed in Benji, claims that his own confession was coerced, and that Dixon was not involved in Wilson's shooting. Wilson died on the same day that Simeon was to open its season. The team chose to play the game, a rematch with Evanston, and won.

In July 1984, Wilson attended the invitation-only Athletes For Better Education camp in Princeton, New Jersey. The camp allowed scouts and coaches to watch top high school students in a single location. After the week-long event, Wilson was ranked the number-one high school player in America. As his senior season approached, it was believed that Wilson was considering scholarship offers from the University of Illinois, DePaul University and Indiana University.

On November 20, 1984, Wilson decided against lunching with teammates as he wanted to talk to his girlfriend, Jetun Rush, with whom he had been having significant issues. The couple had conceived a child early in 1984, a son named Brandon, and Rush would neither speak to Wilson nor let him see his child. Meanwhile, Calumet High School student Billy Moore was outside Simeon's campus with a pistol looking to avenge his cousin, who had been allegedly robbed of $10 by a Simeon student. After finding out the conflict had been resolved, Moore and his friend Omar Dixon decided to stay nearby and eventually the two followed Moore's friend Erica Murphy to a nearby luncheonette located on South Vincennes Avenue, just up the street from Simeon.

He had one son, Brandon Wilson (b. September 1984), with his high school girlfriend Jetun Rush. Brandon, who was 10 weeks old when his father died, went on to play basketball at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, wearing Wilson's number 25.

In the fall of 1981, he began his freshman year at Simeon. During the 1982–83 season, Wilson was the only sophomore on the varsity basketball team. For the 1983–84 season, Simeon advanced to the Illinois AA State Championship, which was held at Assembly Hall on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Behind Wilson, Simeon defeated West Aurora High School by nine points in the semifinals and followed it up with a victory over top-ranked Evanston Township High School to win their first ever state title. ESPN HS regarded Wilson as the best junior in the country for the 1983–84 season. He would play basketball with R. Kelly and Nick Anderson. Wilson was described as "Magic Johnson with a jump shot" by his Simeon coach, Bob Hambric.

Benjamin Wilson Jr. (March 18, 1967 – November 21, 1984) was an American high school basketball player from Chicago, Illinois. Wilson, a Neal F. Simeon Vocational High School basketball player was regarded as the top high school player in the U.S. by scouts and coaches attending the 1984 Athletes For Better Education basketball camp. Wilson is noted as the first Chicago athlete to receive this honor. On November 21, 1984, Wilson died due to injuries he sustained in a shooting the day before.

Born in 1967, Wilson born to Ben Wilson Sr. and Mary Wilson (née Gunter) and was raised in the Chatham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Mary Wilson had two sons from a previous marriage, including Curtis Glenn, and would have sons Anthony and Jeffrey with the elder Wilson before the couple divorced. Wilson began playing basketball at an early age, starting in elementary school. He started at St. Dorothy School and later transferred to Ruggles Elementary School, graduating in 1981. Wilson practiced at Cole Park in Chatham and participated in summer league games in Chicago. As his game developed, friends and family surrounding Wilson began to notice that his talent could make him one of the best, if not the best, players in the sport. They made it a point to protect Wilson from trouble as he got older; as he was entering high school, the nationwide crack epidemic was in full swing and some of the people closest to Wilson, including his older brother Curtis, became addicted. Chicago's violent crime rate was very high during this time as well, especially on the South Side.