Tony Parker and Pau Gasol played for him. Becky Hammon coached alongside him. Dirk Nowitzki and Dwyane Wade waged battles against him.
He is San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.
And he, finally, is a Hall of Famer.
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame made it official Saturday, with three of the NBA’s all-time international greats — Nowitzki, Parker and Gasol — joining Wade, Hammon and Popovich as the headliners of the 2023 class that will be enshrined on Aug. 11 and 12 at ceremonies in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
“This is basketball heaven,” Wade said on the ESPN telecast of the announcement in Houston.
Also getting the Hall’s call: the 1976 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team; former Purdue coach Gene Keady, a seven-time Big Ten coach of the year; former Texas A&M women’s coach Gary Blair, who took two teams to the Final Four; longtime coach at Division III Amherst and two-time national champion David Hixon; and Gene Bess, who won 1,300 games as a junior college coach at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
The late Jim Valvano, who as a coach led North Carolina State to the 1983 NCAA title, was selected as a contributor — also taking into account his work as a broadcaster and an outspoken advocate for cancer research…
