Russell, who was a no-brainer selection as a player back in 1975, joined Tom Heinsohn, Bill Sharman and Lenny Wilkens as the only NBA participants honored for both roles. Probably the most poignant moment of the evening focused on Bill Russell, the legendary Celtics center who was inducted Saturday as a coach. A few inductees later, he came back for the extremely rare Hall speech encore, sharing a few more thoughts about his legacy. Wallace raised one fist high, proclaimed “Panthers march!” and did just that, off the stage and back into the crowd. Put me on a level playing field, and I’ll show you.” I couldn’t play the game the way they wanted me to play the game. But what type of legacy are you building? What potential legacy? I’ll tell you my legacy: I wasn’t welcome. How much do you take? How much do you leave behind? One blessing at a time… The toughest part of life is the most underrated part of life that you would ever hear about.
“Life is what you give it, life is what you take from it. They focused on his underdog life, being the 10th of 11 kids growing up poor in rural Alabama, underestimated at every level along the way, and yet outplaying the great Shaquille O’Neal in the clincher for an NBA title. Wallace didn’t even use the teleprompter, his words an amalgam of affirmations and free association. Wallace is the only undrafted NBA player - his name never was called in 1996 when he came out of the Virginia Union - to still wind up in the Hall.
The most unique speech of the night came from Ben Wallace, the four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year and a driving force of Detroit’s 2004 championship. Most of them blew past the digital countdown clock in their special moments, and the spectators seemed not to mind. The most new Hall of Famers in a single night made for arguably the longest ceremony in recent memory, too, running about three-and-a-half hours. Then again, with a Class of 2021 that the folks at the Hall billed as the biggest ever - 16 individual honorees - it probably was inevitable that most of the raw-human-emotion buttons would get pushed. Maybe that’s why so many of the acceptance speeches seemed just a little more humble, expressing a bit more gratitude, with more than a few references to - as newly inducted Bobby Dandridge put it - “the God of my understanding.”Īll of it was on display: Laughter, tears, pride, nostalgia, shout-outs and more, layered onto what already was an emotional, pensive day for so many in the arena, watching from home or neither. 11th attacks, a graphic of the New York skyline kept a vigil, start to finish, over the proceedings. At the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2021 Enshrinement, which took place Saturday night on the 20th anniversary of the Sept.
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