Other Sports - Basket Ball

A pair of giants went into the Hall of Fame together. For Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing that seems appropriate.

Olajuwon and Ewing are two of the seven inductees from the Class of 2008 that were enshrined into the Basketball Hall Of Fame on Friday evening.

Joining the centers are fellow NBA player Adrian Dantley, former Miami Heat coach Pat Riley, Detroit Pistons owner Bill Davidson, ESPN personality Dick Vitale and former Immaculata women’s coach Cathy Rush.

Davidson and Vitale both were inducted as contributors.

And as expected, it was Vitale who gave the most moving speech of the night, sounding like a star-struck fan and lauding everyone from Magic Johnson to Bob Knight, who was the boisterous ESPN commentator’s presenter. He spoke about his coaching days and his father’s inspiring work ethic.

“That’s why it breaks my heart when I see some athletes, chips on their shoulder,” Vitale said. “Are you serious? Flying charter planes? I don’t want to hear about 80 games a year. What other job do you get four months vacation? Are you serious? Making millions if you can’t play.”

Over the past two-plus decades, Olajuwon and Ewing have had their careers intertwine numerous times. However, Olajuwon and Ewing have more in common than their frequent clashes in the professional ranks.

Both foreign-born players, Olajuwon grew up playing more soccer than basketball as a child in his native Nigeria. Ewing was born in Jamaica before eventually moving to the Boston area as a child.

“He and I are a lot alike,” Ewing said during his election in April. “We both came from different countries. We both had a lot of raw talent, but we both were involved with some very special people and here we are.”

While Olajuwon was busy forging the footwork skills in soccer that would later make him one of the greatest centers in NBA history, Ewing used to take class field trips to the Hall of Fame, located in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts.

But Ewing never believed that he would one day be among the greats honored there.

“I just remember looking at the greats, Russell, Wilt,” he said. “I never thought that I would be among them. It was not until college that I had an idea how good I could be.”

Olajuwon had the same type of naivete about American basketball until he was found by a scout and brought to Houston, where he would help the Cougars reach three Final Fours.

“I had no idea how big and how important the Final Four was when I went for the first time,” Olajuwon said at the election ceremony. “I was nothing like I had been used to.”

Olajuwon would go on to face Ewing in the 1984 Final Four, when Georgetown posted an 84-75 victory over the Houston in the national championship game.

That would be the first of numerous battles between the two centers, the biggest being the 1994 NBA Finals, where Olajuwon’s Houston Rockets edged Ewing and the New York Knicks in seven games.

It was the first of back-to-back NBA crowns for Olajuwon and Houston.

“Hakeem was the hardest player I had to face,” Ewing said. “I beat him in college, he beat me in the NBA.”

Despite the titanic clashes, Olajuwon and Ewing are both thrilled to be going into the Hall of Fame together, as they were both a part of a very special time for big men in the NBA in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.

“If you look at the time that we played, it was a very special time,” Olajuwon said. “To play with Patrick, David (Robinson), Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal), it was a very important time for big men.”

One of Ewing’s coaches during his 17-year career was Riley, one of the most successful coaches in the history of the NBA.

A three-time NBA Coach of the Year, Riley has won five championships, four with the Los Angeles Lakers and one with the Heat. He also appeared in the NBA Finals nine times, including with the Knicks in 1994. He was happy to have some of his former players in the crowd during his induction speech.

“I never felt that this would ever happen,” Riley said of the honor. “That being named and inducted into the Hall of Fame, to have my players come back and honor me, so I love all you guys for being here. Thank you so much, it is a great, great honor and I appreciate everything.”

Dantley caught the tail end of what has been considered the golden age of big man, playing 15 years with such teams as the Buffalo Braves, the Pistons, Utah Jazz and the Lakers.

A six-time All-Star and the league’s leading scorer in 1984, Dantley collected 23,177 career points, ranking 23rd on the all-time scoring list.

One of the owners that Dantley worked under was Davidson, who has served as the owner of the Pistons since 1974. He has won three NBA titles in that time, and claimed another two in the WNBA as the owner of the Detroit Shock.

A former coach of the Pistons, Vitale made his real mark on the game of basketball as a college basketball analyst for ESPN.

Vitale has been vital in raising the popularity of the college game due to unbridled enthusiasm and lexicon of memorable phrases like “Awesome, Baby” and “PTP-er or Prime Time Player.”

A two-time finalist before being inducted, Vitale was his normal colorful self during the announcement.

“I thought I was going to be the Susan Lucci of Hall of Fame nominations,” Vitale joked.

An individual that had to go through five previous nominations before being inducted was Rush, who was one of the top coaches at the start of women’s basketball in the 1970s.

Rush guided Immaculata to three consecutive AIAW national titles starting in 1972. Overall, she made six straight appearances in the AIAW Final Four.