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Hall honors three deserving inductees
Updated: Saturday October 06, 2001 11:25 PM
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- The game of basketball got the red-carpet treatment Friday night -- literally -- at the Springfield Civic Center, site of the 2001 Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony. The area outside the arena's lower entrance was the setting for an Oscars-style parade of limos -- well, minivans, anyway -- where all kinds of hoops cognoscenti strutted across an actual red carpet on their way inside. That tableau created quite a first impression on my inaugural visit to an enshrinement ceremony, though I must confess I did not exactly break out into gooseflesh when the public-address announcer called out, "Ladies and gentlemen ... Dick Stockton and Lesley Visser !" It's been a long time since I've heard the word "hallowed" used so often in a sports setting, but that theme proved apropos for most of the evening. The three men who were inducted -- John Chaney, Mike Krzyzewski and Moses Malone -- have built their basketball legacies with admirable grace and dignity. The two-hour-plus ceremony was distilled into about 20 minutes of actual airtime during NBC's telecast Saturday. That's too bad, because most of what was said Friday night at the podium was well worth hearing. The night started with presentations to USA Basketball president Tom Jurnstedt, Stockton and Curry Kirkpatrick for induction under awards set aside for administrators, broadcasters and writers, respectively. Not surprisingly, the most memorable lines were delivered by Kirkpatrick, who throughout his career has often wielded his pen more like a needle. Apparently unable to be both witty and gracious, Kirkpatrick chose the former. When he said that his getting into the Hall of Fame seemed as "likely as Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight being in the same room together," you could feel the vast room grow tense. At that point the face of a thoroughly unamused Coach K popped up on the big screen while his wife, Mickie, kept her eyes on the floor. I got the feeling that if Mickie had looked up toward the podium at that moment, Kirkpatrick would have disappeared in a cloud of vapor. When Stockton took the mike he said, "I guess someone forgot to tell Curry this wasn't a roast." Following a video tribute that included a hilarious bit from Temple's No. 1 fan, Bill Cosby, former Georgetown coach John Thompson was called out to present Chaney as the evening's first inductee. Noting that both Chaney and Knight were in the building, Thompson proclaimed the Springfield Civic Center to be "the safest place in America. What terrorist is going to try to mess with those guys?" He grew emotional as he described Chaney's commitment to elevating the nation's social conscience with respect to young athletes, and described Chaney as "a man's man, a coach's coach and a player's teacher." After half-warning, half-promising the audience that he would not be brief, Chaney proceeded to dispense his standard meandering eloquence. (He even gave some culinary advice: "Never cook eggs in an aluminum pan!") Waxing elegiac, he described how when he was in high school, the teachers decided he wasn't college material, so they put him in shop and woodworking classes. (He sabotaged the assigned projects, turning his wooden stools into tabletops.) Things were different when he got to college at Cheyney State. "They never put a ceiling on what you could learn," Chaney said. "They believed in building up the floor so you could reach any ceiling." Chaney closed by reading a quote from Yeats, inscribed on a framed picture of a young boy lying on a sheetless bed in a barren room with a football by his side: "I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you might just tread on my dreams." During his 21 years as a pro player, Malone rarely spoke to the press, leaving the impression that he was shy. His presenter, former Sixers teammate Julius Erving, painted a far different picture, describing how Malone would always shower first after games so he could sit in the middle of the locker room and critique each teammate's performance as they emerged. Malone did not look entirely comfortable at the podium ("I'm sweating because I'm 6-foot-10 and near the lights"), but that made him only seem more dignified. "People called me a superstar," he said. "I still don't understand that word. What is a superstar?" Malone affected deep humility and appreciation for teamwork, twin sentiments that are sorely missing in today's pro game. "Y'all told me how great I was because I didn't know," he said. "Once I start telling myself I'm great, that's when I stop working. It's over for me then." As the all-time leading offensive rebounder by more than 2,000 boards, it's hard to imagine Malone not working. Enshrinement ceremonies don't usually generate much news, but this one was an exception. The relationship between Krzyzewski and Knight, who coached Krzyzewski at Army and then hired him as an assistant at Army and Indiana, has been strained for most of the last decade, and the two have had almost no contact the past few years. Yet there stood Knight Friday night, praising his disciple as "the best coach of any team I've gone up against." Knight, who began by saying, "The biggest thing Mike learned from me is what not to do," also sounded the evening's most resonant note when he asked everyone in the arena with any kind of affiliation with the nation's military to stand and be recognized. Coach K is widely perceived as a stoic figure, so it was particularly moving to see his lip and chin quivering madly as former Big East commissioner Dave Gavitt presented him with his Hall of Fame ring. Krzyzewski composed himself long enough to offer words of thanks and praise for his mentor -- "There's only one person in my entire life I've called Coach, and that's you," he said -- but Krzyzewski's voice quavered again when he spoke of his late father, an immigrant who changed his name to Kross so he would be able to find work as an elevator operator. Noting that he was being inducted under his true surname, Coach K said, "I'm glad my dad is going with me into the Hall of Fame." Krzyzewski finished up by invoking one of his favorite metaphors about life: "I tell my players all the time, either you're on the train or you're not, but if you're on it you better be on all the way." Then he asked his wife to join him at the podium -- in the "front car" -- so they could ride together into the Hall. That line proved fitting for the entire evening. Sure the ceremony was oozing with corn, but it did more than honor three great careers. It celebrated a great American game, a game that continues to take so many of us on a very merry ride. Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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