SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is set to enshrine the star-studded class of 2023, and four Spurs legends are headlining one of the most accomplished groups of inductees ever.
Gregg Popovich, Tony Parker, Becky Hammon, and Pau Gasol are all set to be honored in Springfield Massachusetts on Saturday, along with two guys who had many classic battles with San Antonio in Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki, among others. The ceremony will be held Saturday evening at 7 p.m., aired on NBATV.
The festivities were already underway Friday afternoon, as honorees signed autographs for fans and spoke to the media. One Spurs fan even had everyone sign his arm and got all of the autographs permanently inked, much to the amusement of Pop and Tony.
Here's what the inductees had to say about life, basketball, and each other ahead of the induction ceremony Saturday.
Gregg Popovich
Popovich has won more games than any NBA coach ever, a true legend of the sport with five titles and a gold medal to his name. He doesn't care much for talking about his accomplishments or his place in history, but he's going to have to deal with it for a few days.
He joked that money is what keeps him coming back, then earnestly explained that competing and teaching fuel his fire.
"The competition is just thrilling," he said. "The teaching is fun in the sense that you get to see people grow, not just week-to-week but year to year, you watch that growth on the court off the court. Over time those guys become your friends, to the point where I might find myself listening to them more than they're listening to me just because they're young and their minds are active."
The Air Force grad is also known as an outspoken advocate for social justice.
"I just think at some point I realized how much is just wrong... this'll sound unpatriotic as an academy grad and everything, but there's a whole lot wrong with our country especially as far as social injustices are concerned," he said. "To be totally blunt with you, when I looked at my team, they're mostly Black. Their stories of growing up... I'm from Gary Indiana, and when you're aware of these injustices and you get a little older, and not only do you hear the stories from your players about some of the things they had to endure as kids, and you look at some other situations, like our educational system is in flux right now. You've got people wanting to burn books, ban books, and tell us that the people who were enslaved learned good lessons, just ignorant, stupid stuff, it's hard to just go to practice and think about, 'we're gonna work on ball movement, ball pressure, whatever it might be for that day. Say 'ok guys, good luck to you.' It just seemed like it would be a way to develop more trust, more love and concern for the individuals and the group as a whole if you actually brought something to light that was important. That's when we started to have speakers come in and talk about issues, and it was appreciated. The players learned a lot about each other, and it made me feel like I was doing something that was more important than just basketball."
Popovich said one thing he learned at Air Force is that you never accomplish anything alone, and he spoke about the Hall of Famers he's coached through the years. David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker will present him for induction on Saturday night.
He's met the requirements for induction for a while, but Jerry Colangelo told reporters that Popovich didn't want to be inducted before his players.
"I got to know them for a very long time, get close to their families, their children, my grandchildren go to school with Tim Duncan's children. It's pretty special in that regard," Pop said. "The effect they have on me, it gives me much more meaning than teaching somebody how to go backdoor to be very honest with you. It's beyond basketball, and I think that's what sustains us as we move through life. I don't go to bed at night thinking too much about three-point shots or anything, that's what we did during the day, but I do hope that the players are doing well in their own regard in their lives. That's what really matters to me."
Tony Parker
When Parker was 19, it may have been hard for him to picture this day. He's talked a lot about how Duncan didn't speak to him when he was a rookie, and how his first workout in front of Pop was a disaster.
"My first workout was terrible, Pop didn't want to see me anymore. He was like, 'He's terrible, I don't want to see him anymore.' Thank god to RC Buford and Sam Presti forcing Pop to do a second workout," he told KENS 5's Nate Ryan. "It feels surreal to be honest with you."
Pop recalled his first impressions of the Frenchman
"I don't want him, he's a weenie," Pop deadpanned. "He's unaggressive, he doesn't like contact, he's 19, I don't want to see him. His agent at the time called RC and I and said, 'give him another shot, Pop you're missing out. It was a bad workout, I agree with you, but don't be so hard on him.' I said ok, he came back. The way I set it up was I brought in four thugs from San Antonio. They couldn't play but they were meaner than hell, and we did a post workout. So I put this point guard in the post, and we played round-robin defense in the post, he had to guard them all, and he kicked their ass, and he showed me that I was totally wrong."
Pop recalled trusting him early and coaching him hard as they went on to win four titles together, praising his intellect and communication skills. On Friday Parker ribbed his coach after seeing an old photo, and joked that he couldn't get rid of the guy.
Parker reminisced about his teammates Duncan and Ginobili being inducted in the previous two years.
"To finish it off this year, for the third year in a row coming here, and going in with Pop, it just shows that we had a special group and we were built different. We really wanted to win, and we never let our ego be above the team, we were all about winning championships. So it's nice to be able to share that with them, that's why I chose Timmy and Manu to be my presenters."
Parker is the first Frenchman inducted, and he called fellow inductee Dirk Nowitzki the greatest European player of all time. The rivalry between their teams was intense, but the respect was always high.
"I'm not going to lie. I used to hate the Spurs," Nowitzki said Friday. "They were the big brother, always beating us up."
Becky Hammon
Becky Hammon was one of the greatest players in WNBA history, playing much of her career in San Antonio with the Stars before joining Popovich's bench as an assistant coach. She broke barriers as a woman in the NBA, and in her first year as head coach of the Las Vegas Aces she led her team to a championship.
"My journey is not by mistake," Hammon said after winning the WNBA title.
She wasn't heavily recruited out of South Dakota, and a record-setting collegiate career with the Colorado State Rams wasn't enough to be drafted into the WNBA, but she eventually became one of the best players in the history of the league. She spent eight years as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs and still got passed over for NBA head coaching jobs.
"Every hard thing that I've gone through has built something in me that I've needed down the road," she said. "And even though it sucks in the moment to not be picked or to get hurt or whatever it might be, the hard stuff builds stuff in you that's necessary for life, and you'll be using it down the road. It may not feel like that in the moment. But for me, you know, it's not really about proving other people wrong... It's proving myself right. If you guys haven't figured it out yet, I don't really care. You like me? You don't like me? I don't care. I'm just gonna be myself. And if you like me, great. If not, we just keep it moving."
Hammon wasn't present on Friday, and Pop jokingly asked where one of his many coaching proteges was knowing that she had a game to coach.
"Becky is... I'm in love with her. I just have to admit that to the world, I'm in love. She is a fiery, competitive, take no prisoners gal. The first time I knew that was when I went to see her WNBA game in San Antonio, she was the point guard for the team. She reminded me of my youth, she was a wise-ass out there on the court, chewing her gum, directing traffic, making everybody do what she wanted them to do, she ruled the whole gym, it was amazing."
Pop recounted how toward the end of her playing career she suffered an injury that cost her a season, and he invited her to sit in with his coaching staff.
"She spent the year going to every meeting we had, every coaches meeting scouting meeting, manager stuff, everything, and I learned pretty quickly that she was a star in every way shape and form. Plus she drinks wine and she's got a good sense of humor, so it's a hat trick as far as I was concerned. When I had an opportunity that's when I hired her to be on the bench as the first woman. When we'd go to dinner on the road, the coaches, she and I would sit together for all the years she was with me, cause I just enjoyed being there. She's fantastic."
Pau Gasol
Pau Gasol helped elevate international basketball and won two NBA championships in his time with the Los Angeles Lakers. The first Spaniard in the Hall is the highest scoring player in EuroBasket history, winning three titles in that competition along with three Olympic medals. He played for the Spurs from 2016 to 2019 at the tail end of his career.
Gasol made an immediate impact at the NBA level, the first foreign player to win Rookie of the Year. He made six All-Star games and four All-NBA teams, and as basketball became a more perimeter-oriented game he explored that frontier as a skilled big man who could shoot and pass. He was a perfect fit alongside Kobe Bryant, who gave him tons of credit for the two titles they won together in LA.
He said that a big reason he joined the Spurs was to team up with a fellow international trailblazer in Parker and learn from Pop. At the time he arrived, San Antonio was still competing at a high level.
"It was fun, it was different. After so many years of facing each other internationally and in the NBA, same with Manu, it was special," he said. "That played a factor in my decision in going to the Spurs... It was a good fit for me in my career at that point. It was 2016, I was 36 at that point, signed a three-year deal. I wanted to provide quality to a team that was already great, and just spend time with those guys, compete with those guys instead of compete against them. Learned from Pop, experienced him, and we loved the San Antonio community, the fanbase was great. Obviously there's a strong Spurs imprint in this class, and it's fantastic what the Spurs have done the last 20 years, it's incredible."
KENS 5's Jeff Garcia is in Springfield covering the festivities, and you can follow him on Twitter for the latest.